


Wolves in the World

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Airships, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Canon Appropriate Violence, Fighting and making up, Happy Ending, M/M, Magic, PTSD, Team Bonding, discussions of (past) torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:47:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 86,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4011628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1937, Tony Stark and the crew of The Iron Avenger fish Revolutionary War hero Captain America out of the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. With war brewing in Europe, the crew of The Iron Avenger will face magical hazards, cunning assassins, and more on their quest for a centuries-old magical artifact - which just so happens to be attached to Steve's best friend.</p><p>Reader recommendation by Wordwitch: "This fantasy steampunk retelling of The Avengers together with Iron Man and Captain America : the Winter Soldier, set just before WWII with a Steve and Bucky from the American Revolution, is a long, deeply plotty, immensely satisfying read."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [runningondreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art Post: Wolves in the World - Stowaway](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4011343) by [runningondreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/pseuds/runningondreams). 



> For the 2015 Captain America/Iron Man Reverse Big Bang. So many thanks to my partners in crime: My magnificent artist, runningondreams, and my betas, synteis and fjuri. You ladies are the best!

Tony dropped into the pilot’s rigging with a curse, struggling for the harnessing that would keep him secure to the helm as the ship pitched. Just out of sight, _The Iron Avenger’s_ wings creaked and complained, weighed down and glistening with ice, while they slowly lost altitude. 

“Ladies and gentleman,” he said over the comms, as if he wasn’t fighting the controls to keep them aloft, “Please mind your arms and legs, and hold onto your asses. I am not responsible for any lost body parts.” 

The airship dropped another ten feet, the cold air reducing the gas volume in the balloons and putting yet more strain on the already over-worked wings. On his dash, the display flickered an alarmed red. Tony wrenched a hand away from the wheel and spread his fingers wide over the wing controls, burning the constructs hard. He could feel them tugging at him, a subtle pull on his chest that let him know that they were nearly at their limits. To his left, the finder hesitated over the map, drifting away from the marked point, and then arrowed back. It had been slipping back and forth for days, as if unsure of its results, something it had never done before. Tony would think it were broken if it wasn’t his own excellent engineering, but he was curious to know why his finder thought one of his workings was in the water off the coast of Greenland. 

“Stark, are you drunk?” Clint called up from the lower deck, “Hold it steady!” 

“Oh, sure,” Tony muttered, “Keep us from plunging to an icy death, and don’t let the ship move while doing it.” He rose his voice, “This is as close and you’re going to get, drop the sub.” 

“Ready, Nat?” 

Barely visible in the communications mirror with the curve of the balloon above her shoulder, Natasha shifted forward against the straps and gave Clint a thumbs-up through the window. Clint threw the lever, sending the small submersible plummeting into the freezing water. Tony felt the constructs worked into the submersible’s metal casing tug at him as they activated, keeping her craft warm, pressurized, and airtight. Tony imagined her under the water, imagined _himself_ under the water and his pulse flickered, his vision going gray around the edges. He banished the thought with a sharp shake of his head and made himself focus on the task of keeping the ship in the air. He might have an issue with water, but he’d beaten that phobia nearly to death and couldn’t afford to pay any attention to it.

Leaning over the mirror, Natasha asked, “You hear me, Stark?” 

“Clear as a crystal bell, muffin,” Tony answered, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Above her head, the water was the color of dead flesh, gray and speckled white. He knew the submersible was probably the safest watercraft on the face of the planet with all the geometric constructs inscribed into the bulkheads, but he’d never tested it in water at negative twenty-six degrees Celcius with the craft still tethered to the ship. She obviously didn’t share his concerns, and was comfortable in the pilot’s chair, strapped forward over the padded seat so that her eyes were level with the viewing port. 

A gust of wind buffeted the airship, making the port wings shudder. Tony wedged his shoulder against the wheel to hold it steady and dragged his fingers over the wing controls. The constructs carved into the side of the ship hissed and set up fine wisps of smoke into the morning air. The wheel began to slip, but Clint vaulted over the helm and caught it just before Tony lost control. He pressed himself tight to Tony’s side and threw his weight against the wheel. 

“I’ve got it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Get the wings.” 

Tony jerked away from the wheel and slammed his bare hands onto the red circles of geometry glowing hot on the console, sucking in a sharp breath at the heat of it searing into his palms. His construct tattoos awoke up and down his arms, inching across his shoulders and down his spine. He arched into the heat of it and closed his eyes to fall into the working, picking apart the threads to target the anti-frost constructs inscribed deep into the spines of the wings. He fed them energy and felt them burn, melting the ice gathering on the flexible membrane. 

“Nat, maybe you should move a little less leisurely, how ‘bout it?” Clint prompted through gritted teeth as the wind jerked them sideways once more. Tony felt the motion of the ship like it was his own body, heard Clint’s voice distantly buzzing in his ear, a faint sound under the whistle of the wind. 

“I’m sightseeing,” Natasha responded vaguely. 

Tony pulled enough attention away from the wings to lift a hand off the left display, and ran two fingers over the line that represented the cord tethering her to the ship. The construct set in the pulley assembly sent a ripple of energy down the length to keep the cord supple and free of frost. 

“Your oxygen is running low,” Tony warned, darting his eyes over the indicators for her craft. “I can only give you a few more minutes at most.” 

“Found it.” 

Tony looked up at the mirror. Natasha swiveled her mirror around to face the viewport, showing a chunk of cloudy ice with a dark shadow at the center. He flicked his thumb over the mirror, and the image spun, stopping again on a narrow view of the engineering bay. 

Whistling, he sing-songed, “Brucey, hey, there, how are you? Having a good time?” 

“Oh, a grand time,” Bruce responded distractedly, just his head and shoulders visible in the mirror as he knelt in the center of a circle with his hands on the floor. “I can steer the downdrafts away all day, just take your time.” 

“Keep up the good work, love you, Greenbean.” Tony blew an absentminded kiss at the mirror and flipped it back to Natasha. “If you can’t have it up in two minutes, we’re going to pull you out of there,” he warned. 

“I can make it,” she said unhurriedly. Tony watched the bright blue rays of the submersible’s lasers cutting the section away from the larger block. Clawed mechanical arms reached up and caught the ice as it drifted free, dragging it out of the mirror’s range. 

“Bring her up,” Tony ordered, yanking his hands away from the wing controls and catching the wheel. Clint hovered a moment to make sure Tony had control of it and launched back over the helm. He caught the railing and dropped over the side, exactly like he shouldn’t on an icy deck. Clint hit the lower deck and slid, windmilling his arms to regain his balance. He recovered well and skated the remaining yards to the prow of the ship, where he caught the railing and yanked the lever to drag the submersible back up. 

Tony shivered faintly in the cold air as the heat of the constructs faded from his hands and left them stinging on the polished handles of the wheel. His tattoos darkened, fading under his skin, and he rolled his shoulders to displace the discomfort. On the console, the wing displays cooled back to black lines cut into the polished wood, and the ship fought him. He strained against the wheel to hold the vessel steady while the pulley system dragged the submersible back onboard. 

Waiting only as long as it took to get the submersible tethered back to its mooring so it wasn’t functioning like an anchor, Tony released the tension on the wheel and let the wind bear them toward land. The block of ice _thunked_ to the deck and slammed into the stairwell. Natasha popped the canopy on the submersible and slithered out of the pilot’s rigging like an eel, dropping gracefully to the deck and sliding across it like a dancer, running straight into Clint’s arms. He caught her easily, steadying her on the pitching deck. 

“Get it below and start defrost,” Tony called over the rail, adjusting for the wind and burning his constructs to keep them aloft while the ice block slid across the deck. Clint and Natasha caught it with hooks and maneuvered it to the cargo door, where Bruce would meet them to thaw out their find in the lab. 

Leaning on the wheel, Tony reached out and flicked the mirror back to Bruce. “Bruce, give me engine power. The deadly duo are on their way below with our icicle. You up for it?” 

“Your weather constructs are easy to power, Tony, I’ll be fine,” Bruce answered calmly, “Are you going to be alright on the wheel alone?” 

“Think I can’t handle my own ship, Big Green?” Tony asked, but the ship tugged at him, the wind pulling them constantly east. “Send Barton back up when you’re done with him.” 

“Sure,” Bruce answered. He climbed off the floor and let the construct at his feet go dark, leaving the engineering bay in a smoldering red glow, and Tony alone at the wheel. 

Tony swiped his hand across the mirror to disconnect it. Unseen, the geometry scratched into the back of the mirror went cold, and Tony settled into the pilot’s rigging, letting it take his weight. He was exhausted in the wake of keeping the ship still in such inhospitable weather, the muscles in his arms and back weak from exertion. His tattoos were all cold and silent under his flesh, only the burning pulse of the construct embedded in his chest working to keep him warm in the wind. He risked setting a hand to his chest, feeling the vibration of the arc reactor under his jacket, a hot reminder of three months in a cold cave having his understanding of the world changed. Eighty-seven pieces of his engineering had fallen off of Stark Industries trucks and into the wrong hands, putting his name on the deaths of thousands of innocents. He’d retrieved only twelve, but he meant to track every single one of them down. 

~*~

It was six miserably cold hours before Tony felt comfortable leaving the wheel. Lounging in the rigging with a whittling knife and a block of balsa wood, Clint looked up when Tony pulled his glove off with his teeth. 

“Gonna do a strip tease for me, Stark?” Clint asked with a wink and a leer.

Tony blew him a kiss over his shoulder. “Sure thing, sweetheart. You first.”

Clint snorted, shook his head, and returned to his whittling. Ignoring the flirting, Tony set his hand to the auto-navigation construct. A series of interlocking lines below his ribs warmed as Tony set the craft on course for New York and finally took his hand away from the wheel. He watched for several seconds to make sure the working had taken hold, and then slid his glove back on. 

“Watch the sky, don’t-”

“Touch anything shiny, call you if anything catches fire.” Clint gave him a jaunty salute with the tip of the blade along with a bright grin, and set the knife back to the woodblock, chipping out a precise wedge. “Make Nat bring me some hot cocoa, would you?” 

Tony snorted. “In what universe do you think _I_ try to make Natasha do _anything_?” He turned to leave, but Clint gave him such a pitiful look that he offered, “I’ll ask her if I see her, and only if she isn’t carrying anything sharp.” 

“She’s always carrying something sharp,” Clint protested.

“Exactly.” Tony smirked at him and dodged a flying wood chip. He clattered down the stairs and shoved the door open, groaning in relief as warm air wrapped around him. Resealing the door behind him, he took a second to relax into the warmth. The months of torture had left him with joints that stiffened in the cold, and the space around his arc reactor still ached when it was damp. He rubbed at the reactor absently, taking deep breaths of the dry air before pushing away from the door.

The inside of the ship was a close tangle of corridors, a perfect melding of metal and wood, every inch of it carefully inscribed with geometric constructs and imbued with Tony’s personal signature. He had more blood and energy in _The Iron Avenger_ than he did in his own body. He hesitated at the intersection between the major corridors – left would take him to his own cabin, right would take him down to Bruce’s lab. His cabin promised dry clothing and his bunk, but the mysterious chunk of ice called to him. He consoled himself with the certain knowledge that Bruce would have coffee on hand and turned right. 

“Barton promised to do all your laundry for a month if you bring him hot cocoa,” Tony said casually as he passed Natasha in the hall, and he could almost feel her wicked-cat grin on the back of his neck. Clint would get him back, but it would be worth it see him hanging all of Natasha’s underwear from the lines. 

Bruce came charging up the stairs just as Tony reached the top, and they collided in a mess of canvas and curses. Tony just barely managed to catch Bruce and brace a foot on the bulkhead to keep them from tumbling down the narrow stairs. Bruce ended up bent backwards over his knee in a near-perfect dip, clutching Tony’s shoulders to balance himself. 

“Why yes, dear,” Tony declared dramatically, “I will marry you.” He swooped down and planted a messy kiss on Bruce’s lips. “Not even going to struggle?” he pouted when he pulled away, disappointed. 

“Would there be a point?” Bruce hiked an eyebrow, one corner of his lips curling up into a smile that always read like an escape from the usual neutral lines. Tony righted him and resettled his oversized button-up shirt. He was dressed in his normal fashion – shirt two sizes too large, and rumpled as if he’d slept in it (he might have), sleeves rolled up past the elbow, pants too large and cinched to his waist with a belt that was too long, shoes scuffed with the laces tucked in to keep them from trailing. Tony wondered, not for the first time, if Bruce honestly didn’t think about how he dressed, or if he did it intentionally to appear less threatening. 

“In a hurry?” Tony prompted finally, reaching up to fix Bruce’s crooked buttons. Bruce let him, but then batted his hands away and waved at him to follow, excitement lighting up his features. 

“You really need to see this. I was just coming up to get you,” he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder to make sure Tony was following.

“Is it a unicorn?” Tony asked, “You know, I always secretly wanted a unicorn. My dad would have skinned me alive if he knew.” Tony grinned. “Probably rolling over in his grave right now,” he added with a smug smile. 

Bruce gave him a look of fond exasperation. “If it _was_ a unicorn, it wouldn’t be coming anywhere near you.” 

Tony tipped his head side-to-side. “Point,” he conceded. “So if it’s not a unicorn, what is it?” 

“I think the better question is _who_ ,” Bruce said cryptically. He pushed his glasses up his nose and gestured to the door behind him as if Tony didn’t know the way to Bruce’s lab. Tony followed him into a bright space of clean lines, the latest scientific equipment sitting next to superstitious symbols scribbled on parchment, religious icons, and colored candles. Like usual, Tony barely resisted rolling his eyes as he stepped through the door. He loved Bruce like a brother, and there was no better augmented chemist than Bruce Banner, but as well as being a doctor, Bruce called himself an alchemistriest, mixing real chemistry with superstition. It made Tony sad at the waste of Bruce’s beautiful mind, and exasperated in equal measures. 

The center of the lab was taken up by a tall metal table with the ice whittled down from the unwieldy chunk Natasha had pulled out of the sea, to a roughly even block measuring approximately seven-by-four-by-two. It looked unnervingly like a coffin. Bruce picked up a container of warm water and poured it over the block’s surface, sloughing away the frost.

“Huh.” Tony tipped his head and walked around the block. Encased in the ice was a round beauty of a shield painted in red, white, and blue rings with a silver star emblazoned on the center. Just under the shield, a man of about six feet lay as though asleep, dressed in knee-high riding boots, a long midnight blue coat open over a cream vest, and an unmistakable silver star set into the middle of his white combat harness. Tony followed the line of brass buttons up his chest and stared disbelieving at an unexpectedly familiar face. He took the pitcher of hot water from Bruce and splashed it over the block again, running a hand sharply across it. 

He felt the tattoos over his ribs and back twist and rise, recognizing a sympathetic signature beneath the ice. The unexpected sensation sent a chill down his spine, and he caught his breath. The man had long lashes dark over pale cheeks, a chiseled jaw, and blond hair drawn into a tail with a black ribbon, strands floating free around his face and neck. Tony knew from years falling asleep to the life-sized portrait that his eyes would be cornflower blue, his smile fierce and bright.

“Well that’s unexpected,” Tony admitted, bending down to get a closer look at the shield, eyes flickering away from the man’s face, heart beating double time. He felt a faint affinity to the shield, even through the ice, the tattoos on the backs of his hands hesitantly flickering to the surface of his skin when he touched the block. It was augmented, and the signature was close enough to his own that his finder had caught onto it. There was probably nothing else in the world that could have convinced him of the man’s identity, no matter how close the likeness was to the hero who had watched over him as a child. He itched to put his hands on the shield, to explore his many-times-great grandfather’s work and discover all the places that it matched his own signature. A vindictive sort of pleasure rose in him – his signature had never been compatible with his dad’s, and to know that he was so close to Great Grandfather Anthony’s signature was like victory on his tongue. 

An incredulous smile spread across Tony’s face. He huffed out a laugh and shook his head in shocked wonder. “A unicorn would have been more believable.” 

Bruce held up one finger, nearly bouncing on his toes, unable to restrain his excitement. His mood was contagious and Tony couldn’t stop grinning, even when Bruce said, “That’s not even the most remarkable part.” 

Snorting, Tony clarified, “We’ve fished Revolutionary War hero and national icon _Captain America_ out of the ice, and that’s not even the most remarkable part?” 

“Wait,” Bruce said, fumbling for a stethoscope. He shoved it into Tony’s hands, and then rolled his eyes and pushed it at his face when Tony only stared at him. “Just listen.”

“To the ice?” 

Bruce grabbed the bell of the stethoscope and worked it over the block while Tony fitted the earpieces. 

“I don’t hear anything except you scrapping that over the ice. My ears thank you, by the way.” 

“Wait.” Bruce held up his finger again, hand inches away from Tony’s nose. His fingers smelled like wax and patchouli, stained ochre by ink at the tips. Caught by Bruce’s mood and filled with curiosity, Tony waited and listened. 

“There’s nothing to-” 

_ Thump. _

Tony froze. He frowned and tipped his head, adjusting the headset. 

_ Th-Thump _ . 

Again, but not possible. 

Another slow pulse. 

“…Is that a _heartbeat_?”


	2. Chapter One

**CHAPTER ONE::**

_Wind shrieked through the airship, tossing it madly side-to-side. Steve crouched down to take advantage of what protection the basket offered, looking up nervously at the balloon, checking over the knots and ropes holding it to the basket. At his feet, three dozen enchanted explosive weapons waited to drop on the general’s head, aimed to take out half the Continental Army with him. Steve pulled his eyes away from the softly ticking spheres and leaned over the communication mirror, a polished sheet of metal cut roughly into a circle, with the shadow of Peggy’s outline a cloudy puddle in the middle. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. “I have to put it down while it’s still over water.”_

_“Steve, just wait. I’ll get Anthony, he’ll fix it. Just wait,” Peggy begged, her voice thick with tears and laced with understanding that she couldn’t voice. The communication mirror made her sound small, as if shouting through a tunnel. Steve had to cup his hands around it to hear her over the wind._

_He nodded. Peggy wouldn’t be able to see it as more than a shift in the shadow, but he repeated the motion until he was sure his voice would be steady when he agreed, “Okay, Peggy. Get Anthony.”_

_Steve waited until her shadow disappeared, and then stepped away from the mirror and leaned over the edge of the basket once more. On the horizon, land loomed like a promise, smoke from hundreds of campfires just barely visible against the morning sky. Steve took a slow breath, braced his feet against either side of the basket, closed his eyes, and held the shield level to his shoulder. With two sharp turns, he severed the thick ropes holding the basket to the balloon, just barely catching the last rope before the basket swung free. The basket seemed to hover for a moment, and then it dropped under him in a shriek of wind. Steve fell back among the explosives and watched the balloon getting smaller and smaller as it disappeared into the sky._

_Hitting the water may as well have been hitting stone._

Steve jerked awake, trying to scream, but his ribs were strangling his lungs and he couldn’t get the air in. By the time he managed to suck in a breath, the shriek of the wind had faded and reality had returned. He was not plummeting down into icy water accompanied by a dozen enchanted explosives. He was in his bunk at SHIELD headquarters, in the small room he occupied between missions, in New York City. The New York City of 1937, which he was told had a population of nearly seven million — more than twice the population of all thirteen colonies in his time. He recited facts to himself while his pulse calmed down, slowly reviewing the last nine months spent learning that the world was a lot bigger than he’d ever dreamed. Once his breath and heartbeat slowed to a normal rate, he switched gears and started reviewing slang and reciting poetry quietly aloud in a continual effort to soften his accent. No one had suggested that he needed to, but the accent made him stand out in this new world even more than his 6’2” frame did; most people found it nearly incomprehensible after more than a hundred and fifty years of language evolution, and it frustrated him to need to repeat himself constantly.

Steve stayed in bed until the clock at the bedside table read _4:15 A.M._ in its luminescent blue display. Erskine’s potion had reduced his sleeping requirements substantially. During the war, that meant being able to sit watches while his men caught some much needed rest. In the new world he found himself in, it meant that startling awake from any number of nightmares five nights out of seven didn’t show on his face during the day. Steve stuffed his feet into a pair of suede slippers and shuffled to the bathroom. Of all the many advancements of the twentieth century, indoor plumbing was possibly Steve’s favorite. Radios, automobiles, and moving pictures were pretty great too, and as much as his fellow agents complained about eating frozen food, Steve wished it was something they had during his war. The sheer variety and availability of food amazed him, and the newer food preservation techniques were a marvel that made him remember hungry winters eating dried venison and tough root vegetables.

Running hot water into the basin, Steve took his time bathing and pulled his hair back into a neat queue with an elastic tie. Flipping on an electric lamp, pulled out a red leather bound book with a white star surrounded by a blue circle worked into the front. The feathered quill that accompanied it was a familiar comfort, and he idly brushed the edge of the feather across his nose as he flipped through the pages.

 _Good morning. Are you awake?_ He wrote, minding his penmanship and spelling. There wasn’t anything like standardized spelling when he’d learned to write, so it was sometimes like learning a new language. He waited for a moment, tapping the feather against his teeth.

Ink boiled up through the pages like blood, and then absorbed back into the creamy surface, leaving behind Tony’s angled handwriting, each letter evenly spaced and precisely crafted.

_Morning, Captain Gorgeous. It’s almost 11. Even I don’t get to sleep that late._

Steve shook his head, but he smiled. When Steve had first opened his eyes in Bruce’s lab, Tony had seemed cold and distant. But the next day, he’d transformed into an outrageous flirt, and it had taken Steve a week to pull Bruce aside to ask if he had a death wish, only to learn that such relationships had been legal for more than thirty years.

 _Where are you? It’s only 4:30 here,_ Steve reminded him.

 _France._ Several minutes later, he added, _What r u wearing?_

Most people expected Steve to disapprove of the shorthand that had risen with the spread of linked tomes, but he thought it was useful and it suited Tony, a creature of more energy than he had time to express. Quirking a smile at the text, Steve dutifully reported his outfit in a neat list.

 _YR no fun with your gym shorts,_ Tony complained. It was several minutes more before Tony asked, _Still no luck with the comm mirror?_

Steve pulled a face at the stack of reflective shards piled on the desk with failed spells etched into the backing. He’d never been much for spellwork, and Tony’s spells were more complicated than anything he’d ever encountered. Instead of reporting his failures again, Steve tapped the quill tip on the page and asked, _When are you due home?_

He’d nearly given up waiting when Tony replied, _3-4 days. I’ll make you a mirror when I get home. G2G – baddies w/my wards._

 _Be safe,_ Steve wrote back.

 _Always,_ Tony lied.

Since Tony had the approximate self-preservation instincts of lemming, Steve just hoped the rest of his crew were up to the task of keeping him safe. He let the quill hover of the page, poised to ask if he could leave with Tony the next time he came home. He’d asked a few times, but Tony maintained that Phil Coulson was somehow better qualified to help him adjust, and that SHIELD was a better place for him than traipsing out on Tony’s ‘asset recovery’ work. No one had said it, but Steve guessed Tony’s mission wasn’t entirely above legal scrutiny. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Steve – if someone had stolen his property, he didn’t see why Tony couldn’t take it back, but the government had gotten a lot bigger and more involved than Steve remembered. He wasn’t sure that the authors of the Declaration of Independence would have approved, but as he wasn’t one of them, he kept his opinions to himself.

He’d seen Tony only once since _The Iron Avenger_ docked at the aeroport in Baton Rouge, and then only for the evening when Tony dropped off the linked tome. Something about the SHIELD building had made Tony antsy, and he’d taken Steve out to a small Italian restaurant for a distracted meal rather than stay on the grounds. It had been nice to see a friendly face, but Tony hadn’t returned, and Steve hadn’t seen any of the other crew members since Baton Rouge. Steve had teammates among the SHIELD agents, but he struggled to make friends out of them and missed the crew of _The Iron Avenger_. Letting out a slow breath, he set the quill aside without asking, and blew across the text to dry it. He closed the book, wrapping the cord around it several times before tucking it away once more.

~*~

Steve read until five, and then left to meet Grant in the gym. The corridors were painted a flat blue-gray, the carpet a slightly darker blue-gray. White doorframes broke up the hallway, most of the doors closed so early in the morning, but he could hear movement in some of the rooms. He made it into the mess hall at quarter-past, and dished up his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs from beneath a warmer, several pieces of thick bacon, still fresh and sizzling, and dropped four pieces of bread in the toaster. He knew how the toaster worked – Fitz had helped him take one apart and showed him where the heating spells were nestled into the casing, with a small bar that activated the spells when the lever was depressed. He understood it, but it still fascinated him, how much magic theory had progressed alongside mechanical technology. Steve waited for the toast to pop up, each piece perfectly golden and crispy, and spread them with butter and sweet apple preserves before taking a seat.  

The mess hall filled up around him, a few agents greeting him with cautious smiles and formal nods. He nodded back to them. He’d lost his chance to make friends with most of them, the strangeness of his situation and the long adjustment period serving to isolate him from them on a personal level. He’d made an effort to fit in once it was clear that he wasn’t having a strange dream, but he had few common experiences with any of the agents, and most of them saw him as some kind of idol instead of a person. It made him uncomfortable, and the unthinking adoration alarmed him, so he kept to himself at the breakfast table.

More gray corridors, though the floor transitioned to an easier-to-maintain laminate. The gym took up most of the second floor of the SHIELD facility, stocked with – Steve was assured – all the best equipment, the floors layered in protective enchantments to reduce stress on the body and prevent injuries, the ducts bespelled to circulate and freshen the air. It was all very regimented, and still strange to Steve. When he was first brought to the odd room, he’d been confused at its purpose – exercising for the sake of exercising – but he found it almost meditative after months of regular use.

Grant walked in a minute behind him, punctual as always, neatly groomed and freshly showered. Ward was Coulson’s second-in-command, an able fighter, and a man of few words. Steve enjoyed his quiet company, but something about the man always seemed distant, as if he was also out of time and place, struggling to understand the world. They fell in step with practiced familiarity, running laps around the indoor track while other agents slowly filtered in and left. They transitioned from the track to the mats without a word, Grant putting his fists up and circling around to Steve’s left.

Steve was what Grant called a ‘scrapper.’ The first time they fought, Steve had broken one of Grant’s ribs before Grant pinned him to the mat with a knee on the back of his neck, Steve apologizing to his ankle the whole time. After nine months of dedicated practice, neither of them were often able to do much harm to the other as long as Steve kept himself in check. They darted in and engaged in a brief bout of furious punching and kicking, and then broke away. A small audience gathered as they sparred, most not even bothering to pretend they were doing something else. Steve had resigned himself to being stared at long ago, and he barely noticed.

“Captain Rogers!”

Steve neatly dodged a punch already in progress, grabbed Grant’s arm, and flung him away to side-step his opponent. Grant stumbled to the edge of the mat as the crowd parted for Agent Coulson. He should have looked out of place in a gym wearing his impeccably pressed suit, but somehow Phil never looked out of place anywhere. Steve couldn’t walk down a sidewalk without attracting attention, and he envied Phil the ability to blend in so effortlessly. Steve drew himself upright and waited to see what Phil needed.

The agent gave him a disarming smile, nodding to Grant in brief greeting. “Come with me, Captain.” He didn’t wait to see if Steve was following, but turned on his heel and strode back through the corridor of agents trying to avoid his eye. Steve knew that a few of them were neglecting their duties to gawk in the gym, and he made eye contact with the ones he recognized as he passed. If there was anything Steve genuinely disapproved of, it was dereliction of duty.

Phil led him through the gray hallways of the sprawling base, keeping up an easy stream of small talk, and offering smiles and nods to the agents they passed. “You sound more and more like you belong here every day,” Phil said, stopping in front of Director Fury’s door to look up at him. Steve had a hard time getting a read on the older agent – he had a constant air of such pleasant calm that it was difficult to tell when he was upset, happy, or being sarcastic.

“Is that a good thing?” Steve braced his hands on his hips and tipped his head, considering Phil’s expression.

“I haven’t decided,” Phil mused. “I kind of miss your accent.” He flashed a grin at Steve and turned to open the door before Steve could respond. He was very good at that – making comments and then walking away before Steve could decide how to react. It had the secondary effect of making sure he always had the last word.

Steve pulled out the elastic in his hair and straightened the tail as he followed into the director’s office. The discovery of Captain America in the ice was big news, and Tony had pushed him out in front of a mob of reporters in his full regalia before Steve even knew what cameras _were_. All the flashing lights had taken him so by surprise that he’d thought he was being attacked, and only Clint and Natasha’s quick thinking had saved the day. Nine months later, he was still hounded by reporters any time he left the base and he’d learned quickly that blending in was his best defense. That meant softening his accent and dressing the part of a modern man. Tony claimed that the press introduction was to protect him from a shady government agency dropping him into a hole, but Steve was still irritated by the whole affair.

“Captain,” Nick Fury greeted as Steve closed the door behind him. He gestured to the empty seat next to Phil.

Still not sure what to think of the director, Steve perched on the edge of the seat and waited for a clue. He’d been in the director’s office more than once to discuss any number of government agencies and military branches that wanted to ‘borrow’ him, and one senator who’d wanted him to go on stage. The whole mess abhorred him, and he was still annoyed with Tony for just dropping him off with SHIELD and leaving Steve to deal with the madness that he’d created. At least the director had so far fended off all claims, and Steve hadn’t needed to put his steadily growing escape strategy into effect.

“Since you look like I’m about to order your execution, I’ll cut right to the chase,” Fury said, setting his pen down beside his pistol and folding his hands over his desk. His one good eye focused on Steve intently. “We’ve uncovered some disturbing intel in the last few days, Captain. Has anyone briefed you on Hitler and his Nazi Party yet?” His eye flickered briefly over to Phil, who gave a short nod in response.  

Steve’s mind instantly provided a running list of everything he knew about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Alternately a hindrance and a boon, the eidetic memory was one side effect of the potion that Erskine hadn’t anticipated. Steve suppressed the crush of information and answered, “I have been.”

Fury nodded once, unlaced his fingers, and then laced them back together again. He shifted his weight forward in the chair. “And has anyone brought you up to speed on Hydra?”

Glancing at his handler with a hiked eyebrow, Steve clarified, “The Nazi science division?” When Fury continued to look at him expectantly, Steve continued, “All I know is that their job is to research magic and magical weapons.” That wasn’t _all_ he knew, but he’d realized soon after the potion that spouting off everything he _did_ know about any topic was a quick way to alienate himself.

“It seems that Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra, has gotten his hands on a pretty advanced magical artifact. Our sources’ reports have been… well, let’s say alarming and leave it at that.”

Steve nodded. “Are we going after it?”

“It is the official policy of the United States government that we are not to get involved with Nazi Germany, Hitler, or anything to do with the situation in Europe. We are still trying to avoid a war with Germany. Basically, Captain, we’ve been ordered to stick our heads in the sand, our asses in the air, and wait for it to all blow over.” Fury sat back in his chair, moving his hands to rest over his stomach, leather jacket and belts creaking as he moved. “To let Europe sort itself out, in other words.”

“Well, I don’t know that Hitler is going to let us do that for long,” Steve said cautiously, “I’ve read just about everything I can get my hands on about ‘the Great War.’ I can understand why the Nazi Party thought some changes were needed in Germany, and I can understand why so many Germans agree with them. I’m also sure there were more than a few people who didn’t agree with _our_ Revolution, but this Hitler has some big ambitions, and I don’t think those ambitions are going to stay inside Germany. The way the Nazis are treating their own people is frightening. If we have the ability to help them, don’t we also have the _responsibility_ to help them?” Steve realized he was getting louder and more forceful the longer he spoke and made himself calm down.

Although he’d never been one for politics, the novelty of him and his status as _a Revolutionary War hero_ lent far more weight to his words than he usually intended, so he had to be careful about what he said even in passing. He’d learned to keep his mouth shut about politics and tried to stay out of the politicians’ way as much as possible. While his first instinct said Fury was a soldier more than a politician, Tony’s warnings rang loud in his ear to be careful of The Spy.

“Whether or not I agree with you, Captain,” Fury drawled, his expression intense and unwavering, “My orders are not to interfere beyond intelligence gathering.”

“But this weapon is something you’re concerned about?” Steve pressed, confused.

“It’s not a weapon, exactly.” Fury opened the folder on his desk and pulled out a glossy photograph. “The artifact is, or is embedded _in_ , a person.”

Steve quirked an eyebrow in surprise – he’d never heard of a magical artifact being a living thing. Artifacts held and channeled more power than the average practitioner could handle – which is why they were artifacts in the first place. What would something like that do to a person? Fury held the photograph out and Steve leaned forward to take it. His breath caught in his throat and his eyes went wide, heart stuttering painfully in his chest. It wasn’t the best photograph, obviously taken quickly and in poor light, but Steve would know him anywhere.

“Bucky?”

The walls closed in on him, the floor spinning beneath his feet. He felt his heartbeat in his throat, heard it battering on the inside of his ears. The picture of Bucky got bigger and bigger in his hands, taking up the whole world. He looked ragged, whipcord thin, his hair lank and hanging around his face, cheeks sunken, eyes lined thickly in khol, and he wore some kind of armor on just his left arm, a dark star inscribed on the shoulder.

“Captain? Captain Rogers?”

The voice was distant, but the brush of Agent Coulson’s hand on his shoulder brought him out of the daze. He looked up slowly, feeling disconnected from his spine, almost sleepy. It occurred to him finally that it could be a dream, but when Agent Coulson snapped his fingers an inch from Steve’s ear, the crack of sound –like thunder, like gunfire- knocked him out of the trance.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked finally, gesturing to the photograph. His mind tried to offer him other explanations – it wasn’t Bucky at all, just someone who looked unnervingly like him, maybe a distant relative. Bucky had had no children before he died, but his sister had been young, she would have married, maybe had a son, and her son had a son, and so on, until some trick of genetics managed to cobble together someone who looked just like his friend but was a hundred and fifty years too young.

“We have been unable to get any additional information about the subject,” Fury explained. “All we know is that this man is fused to a magical artifact, and that he has been linked to at least two dozen assassinations in the last forty years. Most recently we can connect him to the deaths of Louis Barthou and King Alexander the first of Yugolavia about three years ago, and the German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann in 1929. There’s also evidence to suggest he may have been involved in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914.”

Fury gestured to the file while he spoke and Steve reluctantly moved the photograph of Bucky – _not Bucky, a trick of the light_ \- over to flip through the rest of the pages. Twenty-one names typed out on a single sheet of paper, and thirty-four more on the next sheet, each with the word ‘ _unconfirmed_ ’ typed neatly after. Pictures followed, photographs clipped to thick stacks of paper detailing the circumstances surrounding their deaths, and why the agent in charge had linked each instance to the same person or people.

“Or group?” Steve asked, looking up from the first file on King Alexander I. “You said it was this one man?” It seemed ridiculous – the man in the photograph couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. To suggest he’d been an active killer for over forty years boggled the imagination. Except that Steve was living proof of that variety of impossible.

“There has been some debate,” Fury said with a heavy exhalation of breath through his nose, his single eye rolling hard, “As to whether or not someone who is fused to such a powerful magical artifact would even be capable of walking, let alone shooting someone in the head from two hundred yards away.”

Steve flipped the picture back over. _The man_ – not Bucky, God, not that- was shirtless and manacled into a high backed chair. His stomach was chiseled with muscle – not the muscle of a man who used his body in regular ways, but the deliberate toning of someone like Grant, who spent hours a day beating his body into submission. “He looks pretty spry to me.”

“I would be inclined to agree,” Fury said, but he shrugged one shoulder. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that this man is either one of the most deadly assassins of our time, or he is being used to create weapons, or augment other humans. From the look of that chair, I would say that he may be doing so against his will.”

Steve’s eyes flickered over the chair again. He’d been trying to avoid looking at the restraints closely, far too shocked by the ghost of his best friend biting down on a bit, obviously in pain. Thick cuffs clamped over his arms, tight bindings held his chest and hips to the chair. His legs weren’t visible below the knee, but Steve didn’t need much imagination to know he would be bound at the ankle as well.

“Son,” Fury said after a moment of letting Steve stare down at the picture. Steve was too absorbed to hide the angry snarl that twisted his lips and narrowed his eyes. He hated being called _son_ , hated the familiarity it implied, the dominance it suggested. Fury noticed the look and quirked a brow at him. Steve took a slow breath and made his expression relax. “There is a good chance,” Fury continued, “That you are looking at your friend right now. Not a descendant, but the very man you grew up with. We didn’t make that connection until you were recovered.”

Swallowing hard, Steve nodded. His gut told him that Fury was right. Even in the bad photograph, Steve could see all the tiny things that he recognized as _Bucky_ – a dark swath on the right side of his chest that Steve knew was not a shadow but a scar, a souvenir of a sword fight with a British officer, the tilt of his head, the exact shape of his collarbone. Steve ran a rough hand over his face and nodded again.

“So when do we leave?” Steve asked, straightening in the chair.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Fury snorted a laugh. “We have been ordered by the government of the United States of America not to interfere in European affairs. I can’t sanction a mission on German soil to infiltrate a German science facility.”

Steve’s vision went white with instant, blinding fury. “James Barnes is one of _ours_ ,” he snapped. “Is it the _policy_ of the United States of America to leave an American citizen in the hands of the enemy?” He rose out of his chair, the file crinkling in his hands.

“Technically,” Fury said, waiting a beat to make sure Steve wasn’t going to walk out. Steve hovered on the verge of doing just that – he had several escape routes planned, he could be out of the SHIELD facility in under ten minutes, lost in Brooklyn within an hour. From there, it would be a matter of getting a post on a ship bound for Europe, and he would track Bucky down himself if SHIELD wouldn’t help. He wasn’t an experienced sailor, but he knew his way around an airship, and he was strong. He could find work.

Fury watched him patiently, looking up at Steve without even a microchange in his expression to indicate that he was at all worried by the magically enhanced super soldier looming over his desk. “Technically,” he repeated, “James Barnes died in 1781.”

Absolutely poleaxed, Steve could only stare at Fury for several long seconds. He drew in a slow breath. “Technically,” he ground out through his teeth, “So did I.”

“See, that’s why Stark put you in front of a bunch of cameras as soon as you stepped off the gangplank.” Fury pointed at his chest. “Now you exist, and no one can bury you in a hole even if they wanted to. James Barnes doesn’t exist because no one knows he isn’t a pile of bones in some graveyard a hundred and fifty years in the ground. I can’t prove that the man in that picture is James Barnes. I am not going to be able to convince anyone to let me run an operation in Germany to retrieve someone who doesn’t technically exist, _especially_ considering that it might precipitate aggression against the US. Do you understand me?”

“ _No_!” Steve turned to Phil, looking for an ally. He knew that Phil was loyal to SHIELD and Fury, that while Phil was kind to him, he didn’t _owe_ Steve anything, but it was the one shot he had to get some assistance – _any_ assistance – from SHIELD. “He’s my best friend, and if they’ve turned him into some kind of weapon, it’s in the best interests of the country to get him back.”

Phil’s expression remained passive, and Fury made an irritated noise. “Listen up, Captain, I’ll even repeat myself. _I_ am not going to be able to convince anyone to let _me_ run an operation in Germany.” He waited until Steve turned to face him and locked their gazes together. He spoke very slowly and very deliberately as he continued, “I realize that you are under a lot of stress right now. The world has changed a lot for you in the last year, and you might need some time to fully absorb that. Why don’t you take some time off? See the country, hell, go see the world. I understand that your friend Tony Stark is going to be back in New York in a few days. Maybe you should take a break and visit him.”

Steve’s pulse calmed slowly as his brain finally overrode his anger and panic to make him pay attention to what Fury was actually saying instead of the words that were coming out of his mouth. He nodded, straightening his shoulders. “Since there’s nothing SHIELD can do about the situation, maybe I _should_ take some time off,” he agreed, “Thank you for informing me, sir.”

“Thank you for keeping your cool, Captain,” Fury replied with his lips pursed, eye drifting briefly heavenward. He looked over at Phil. “You’ve got some time on the books, Coulson. Maybe you should take a vacation too.”

“Are you ordering me to take a vacation, sir?” Phil asked blandly, fingers drumming on the arms of his chair.

“Just a strong suggestion that maybe Captain Rogers would like a guide while he’s out seeing the sights on his _very long_ , otherwise isolated, and definitely beyond communications’ range trip around the country.” Fury arched an eyebrow and waited for Phil to nod. “And records has been breathing down my neck for how long it’s been since you took time off.” He picked his pen back up, shuffling through his papers, no longer paying them the slightest attention. “Put May in charge of your ops, and before they even march their pushy asses into my office, tell your team that _no_ they can’t all be on vacation while you’re gone, and I swear to the Powers if Skye puts a tracker on you, I will put her in time-out for the rest of the century.”

Phil stood and straightened his suit jacket with a casual tug, buttoning it up again. “Understood, sir.”

“Now both of you get out of my damn office.” He waved at them dismissively and proceeded to ignore them as they made their way out of the room. He conveniently forgot to ask for Bucky’s file back and Steve didn’t remind him.

“I’ll wrap things up and start packing,” Agent Coulson said once Steve closed Fury’s door once more. “Meet me in the mess hall tomorrow night and we’ll plan your cross-country tour so everyone can overhear us and be suitably jealous.” He smiled his unassuming smile that seemed to be always holding secrets. More and more, Steve was learning that the other man actually _was_ always holding secrets and he found it worrying on multiple levels.

Unable to respond to the quip for the nauseating worry churning in his stomach, Steve just nodded. They parted ways at the hallway junction, and Steve broke his established routine to return to his room, where he spent the rest of the day pouring over every detail of the file. His awareness of the linked tome burned in the back of his head, and his fingers itched for the quill. He wanted to talk to someone – he wanted to talk to _Bucky_ \- but he didn’t know how Tony would react to any of it, didn’t know how to explain it in such a way that would make Tony understand, that would make him willing to take Steve on a dangerous, unsanctioned mission into hostile territory. Tony was the best friend he had in the new century, but Steve had a hard time telling how Tony actually felt about him, or if he would be willing to go so far off mission.

In the end, he kept silent, not even responding when Tony wrote him a quick good night, or the next morning when Tony teased him about his beauty sleep, or the following afternoon when Tony complained about Steve running off to parts unknown without telling him. Steve read over the file instead, every word, typo, stray pencil mark, and coffee ring committed to memory, and rehearsed how he would convince Tony to help him rescue his best friend, how far he might be willing to go to secure Tony’s help, and how he was going to get to Germany if Tony refused. When he slept at all, he dreamt about the fall that had claimed Bucky’s life, and the fall that had claimed his own.   


	3. Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO::

Steve crouched low, kept his breathing even, and waited for the footsteps to fade down the gangplank. Forty-nine stories of open air separated him from the street below, and it wasn’t exactly like looking over the side of an airship basket at the ocean, but it was close enough to make his stomach flutter as he backed up against the railing. Two quick breaths and he pushed away from the railing, making the leap from the dock to the airship’s ladder easily, leather-clad hands and feet nearly silent on the sturdy rungs. He scaled the ladder, paused at the top to listen for footsteps or voices, and slid over the side to the deck. In the harsh glare of the chemical lights, _The Iron Avenger_ looked flat and sinister with none of the polished glow he remembered in the afternoon sunlight. Steve slid along the heavily spellworked railing to the staircase leading below.

Reviewing a mental map of _The Iron Avenger’s_ belly as he slid down the stairs, Steve tried to pinpoint the best place to hide until they were in the air. In any other airship, he would have gone straight for the messy clutter of pipes and dark corners that made up the engineering bay, but Tony’s engineering bay was a paragon of efficiency with no space left unused, no corner not easily visible. Instead, Steve turned right at the first landing and headed for the tiny room he briefly occupied after waking.

Steve barely heard the whine of a charging enchantment in time to get his shield off his back. A heavy blow smashed into it, knocking him against the bulkhead. He retreated around the corner in a crouch, keeping the shield up between him and his attacker.

“You sure picked the wrong ship to rob,” Tony observed casually, “Might as well just come out now, because I am way too drunk to aim for incapacitating, and I can’t promise I won’t take your head off.”

Steve slid around the corner shield-first, peering over the edge. “Tony?”

Tony swayed slightly, his hand still up by his face, a strange circular device glowing in his palm. The red glow of the corridor lights battled with the blue-white glow of his spell to cast strange shadows across his face, but he frowned as Steve straightened and lowered the shield over his stomach. Tony’s fingers twitched around the device and the glow intensified briefly before it dissipated.

“Steve?” he asked finally, eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing? I could have killed you!”

“I heard you coming,” Steve said, only half a lie. He couldn’t believe that he’d missed the sound of Tony’s footsteps coming up behind him, but it _was_ Tony’s ship, and he knew every inch of it, every board that creaked.

Tony glared at him a moment longer, reaching out to steady himself against the bulkhead with two fingers. “This is either the glorious beginning of a wet dream, or you’ve gone crazy.”

“Neither, actually,” Steve answered, flushing faintly and just barely stopping himself from asking how often Tony had wet dreams that started with Steve sneaking aboard his ship. He flipped the shield over his head and felt the spells worked in the inside of the shield catch onto the matching pair on the back of his combat harness. “I thought you would be in the tower.”

“That’s an excuse for sneaking onboard my ship? What were you planning on doing?” Tony pointed one finger approximately at Steve’s chest, body compensating automatically for the sway of the ship even when Steve could smell so much alcohol wafting off him that he was surprised Tony was even still upright.

“Waiting until we were over water tomorrow when you couldn’t kick me off,” Steve confessed.

Tony blinked at him, opened his mouth, closed it, burped, and then announced, “That is the _stupidest_ plan I’ve ever heard.” He turned around and waved at Steve dismissively over his shoulder. “’M sure you remember where your bunk is. See you when I’m sober. Probably.” He whirled back around. “You _are_ actually here, right?”

Steve watched him carefully and made sure to speak clearly. “Yes, Tony, I’m actually here.”

Tony watched him suspiciously for a few more moments, as if expecting that he would disappear in a cloud of smoke, and then nodded decisively, and turned back around, muttering, “ _Stupid_ ,” under his breath.

Steve hesitated, watching him stumble down the corridor. The file in his coat pocket felt heavy, and he pressed a hand against it from the outside. The urge to chase after Tony was an almost physical thing tugging at his ribs, but Tony was obviously in no condition to discuss such a dangerous mission. Steve took slow breaths and turned back around to find the small private cabin he’d briefly called home after waking on Bruce’s lab table.

~*~

Steve found Tony seated at the mess hall table the next morning with a large cup of coffee cradled between his hands. He took a deep breath and moved to the sideboard, where a simple breakfast was laid out. Bruce, sitting cattycorner to Tony, did a comical double-take when Steve retrieved a bowl of oatmeal and a grapefruit, and sat down.

“Um…hi, Steve,” Bruce greeted, eyes darting curiously at Tony. “When did you get here?”

“Last night,” Tony answered for him. “Was still holding hope that you were a naughty dream,” he continued, giving Steve an almost accusatory look.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Steve dug a section of the thick skin away from the citrus with his fingernail. He could feel Tony’s eyes boring into the side of his face, but he didn’t look up to meet his gaze. He took his time peeling the fruit, pulling away as much of the bitter membrane as possible and making a sticky mess of his fingers. Tony said nothing, watching him with bleary attention, apparently — _understandably_ — hungover. Before the potion, Steve would have solved that with a strong mug of ale, but opinions on alcohol differed extremely from his time. Alcohol was not, apparently, part of an acceptable breakfast any longer. As far as he was concerned, having fresh fruit at the breakfast table more than made up for missing his morning ale. In his time, fresh fruit was a treat, and only available for a few months. The variety of fruits he’d been introduced to since waking up never ceased to amaze and delight him. He focused on peeling the fruit rather than on Tony’s bleary glare burning a hole in the side of his face. Steve took the time to collect himself, rehearsing his argument for going after Bucky, carefully considering at what point he would be willing to beg, and if Tony would make him.

Bruce glanced in between them, picked up his coffee cup and announced, “I’m going to be… not here. Good to see you again, Steve.” 

“You too, Dr. Banner.” Steve offered him a smile and absently sucked a sticky trail of juice off one finger as he popped a section of the fruit into his mouth and savored the tart flavor.

“This could still be a dirty dream,” Tony mused after a moment of watching him eat.

Steve glanced at him sideways, and then deliberately licked a line up his thumb. “Sorry to disappoint,” he repeated. Tony’s attention made him pause, and he filed it away, one more indication that he did have something to offer Tony in exchange for the use of his airship that went beyond swearing to help him in his quest, and he would do it for Bucky if he had to.

Tony watched Steve’s thumb raptly and then took a slow breath. “Going to tell me why the hell you sneaked onboard my ship? You know you could have just knocked, right? Well, not _knocked_ , because there’s nothing really to knock on, so.” He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “How did you even get _up here_?”

“Service elevator shaft to the roof and repelled down,” Steve admitted readily. He was already caught, so there was no reason not to tell him. “I didn’t break anything,” he added, “But you really should have the ventilation ducts checked. They’re really easy to get into, and big enough for someone my size to get through. At least on the first floor. I got into the elevator shaft after that.”

Tony stared at him, blinked, and then barked out a short laugh. “I’ll do that.” He rubbed his fingers over his forehead. “SHIELD treating you that badly? Just had to escape?”

“No.” Steve shrugged. SHIELD mostly treated him like an asset, but that was alright — he was used to it. “Though this _was_ part of escape plan B, if I needed to get away. But no. Officially, SHIELD thinks I’m taking a vacation, touring the country with Agent Coulson, visiting national museums or something.” He shrugged.

Tony’s eyes went wide. “Someone actually thinks you’d _willingly_ be with Coulson? On _vacation?_ ”

“I like Agent Coulson,” Steve defended, dropping another section of grapefruit into his mouth. “He’s straightforward, and nothing riles him. And he knows a lot about almost everything. I think it would be fun to travel with him.”

Tony gaped at him, made several false starts on a reply and then finally shook his head to dismiss the argument. He settled for, “So instead of being on vacation with Agent Coulson, you’re on my ship. Playing stowaway. In your colonial Captain America uniform.” Tony ticked the points off on his fingers and then nodded. “Well, that makes sense.”

Steve reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the file that Fury conveniently forgot to ask him to return. The large pockets was one of the deciding factors for wearing his old uniform rather than the standard-issue SHIELD uniform. He smoothed out the slight crease and set it on the table. Tony picked it up curiously, flipping the cover open. “SHIELD discovered a powerful magical artifact and—”

“No way,” Tony interrupted, setting the file down immediately, “I’m not taking a mission for SHIELD—”

“ _And_ ,” Steve repeated firmly, “They can’t go after it because US policy is not to interfere in European affairs. But this Johann Schmidt—”

Tony’s spine straightened like he’d been hit with lightening. “Done. Sure, let’s go. Sounds like fun. I’ll call the team back and we’ll leave as soon as the ship is restocked.”

Steve blinked, startled by the abrupt change in tune. “Just like that?” he asked incredulously, feeling blindsided and almost disappointed not to voice the long argument he had worked out during the three day wait for Tony to return from France. “You don’t even want to know what we’re going after?”

“Baby, you had me at _Johann Schmidt._ Finish your breakfast, and I’ll have Jarvis kit you out before we go. You can brief the whole team as soon as everyone is back on board.” He gulped down the last of his coffee, grabbed the folder, and stood, all business and bluster, Steve and any potential wet dream scenarios apparently banished from his thoughts as he blew out of the mess hall. Left stunned at the table, it took several minutes for Steve to remember to finish eating his breakfast, musing over Tony’s worrying behavior.

~*~

“You promised me two _weeks_ , Stark,” Natasha said as she dropped from the gangplank to the deck, “And you couldn’t even give us two _days_?”

“I promised two weeks as long as nothing pressing came up,” Tony replied with a bright smile, looking up from his clipboard and the list of supplies Jarvis had provided him to review. He made a quick note in the margin to increase the food supplies. He had no idea how long they would be gone and with Steve _and_ Bruce on board, they would need all the calories they could squirrel away. “Something pressing came up. Welcome back aboard, buttercup.” He blew her a kiss from a safe distance, because he often did a lot of questionable things, but putting his hands on Natasha Romanov without her explicit permission was something he’d only done once.

Not charmed in the least, Natasha stalked across the deck toward him. She was dressed in a sweet purple number that clung to her hips and flared just above her ankles, a deeper mulberry jacket with fur at the collar, and brown driving gloves. Dressed up to go out, but still concealing a small-caliber revolver on her leg, and probably more sharp things than he could pinpoint even if he had an hour to do it.

Giving him an almost seductive smile, Natasha said, “Stark, I swear, I am going to—”

“Hey, Steve!” Clint interrupted, dropping to the deck behind her and lifting a hand to wave at Steve, apparently brought to railing by the fuss. Tony gave Natasha another smile and her gaze turned assessing, whatever annoyance she felt over having her date interrupted fleeing. She hiked an eyebrow at him. Tony shrugged.

“I didn’t realize you were joining us, Steve,” Natasha said, putting her civil face back on and turning around to face him.

“Unplanned guest,” Tony said, sidling past Natasha to the stairs and jogging up to meet Steve at the top. He unabashedly shoved Steve in between him and Natasha, slapping Steve on the back firmly. He didn’t even have the decency to stumble and Tony rolled his eyes as he suggested, “Go say hi. Play nice with the other children, etcetera.”

Steve gave him a concerned look over one shoulder, but Tony just shoved him harder to get him down the stairs. He tuned out the sound of their voices as his crew greeted Steve like a long-lost family member. Bruce waited at the helm, relaxed in the pilot’s rigging with his own clipboard balanced on his knees. Tony was glad to see him out in the sun — he was painfully pale for a pirate. Really, it was embarrassing to the whole pirate image.

“You going to be okay having him back onboard?” Bruce asked casually.

Tony gave him a sideways look. He’d never spelled out exactly what Captain America had meant to him as a child, what he’d meant to dad, what it had meant to Tony’s childhood that Great Grandfather Anthony was the construct genius who assisted Dr. Erskine in _making_ Captain America, but Bruce was too observant for Tony’s good.

Not bothering to deny it, Tony just said, “I’ll survive. No big deal.” He was silent for several moments, listening to Clint’s animated explanation of their latest recovery mission in France. “He’s not what I would have imagined,” he admitted finally.

“He does seem pretty… human,” Bruce agreed.

“Can’t have him out of that damn uniform fast enough though,” Tony muttered.

Snorting, Bruce said, “I’ll bet.”

Tony just smirked, because, of course, that was true too. He’d meant that the uniform made him feel squirrely, a strange combination of that childhood awe, the feeling of being looked after by someone (really, _something_ ) so much larger than life, and that sick gnawing sensation of walking through dad’s private Captain America collection. He remembered stopping in front of the mannequin dressed in one of Cap’s actual battle uniforms, a scarred, soot-stained thing that had been lovingly cared for by generations of Starks. He knew, even then, that it would be his duty to care for that uniform and all the carefully lit memorabilia one day, and he hadn’t been sure if he wanted to hoard it all, or just donate it to the Smithsonian the moment he had control of the collection.

“We can do this without him,” Bruce said, breaking into Tony’s stroll down unhappy-memory lane. “You don’t have to have him in your space if he makes you uncomfortable.”

Not sure whether to roll his eyes and walk away from his friend for coddling him, or kiss him on the mouth, Tony said, “I like Steve. He’s fine. Besides, have you read the file yet?”

Bruce frowned and shook his head.

Letting out a long breath, Tony said, “Trust me, this is not something we’re doing without him.”  Tony could see Bruce opening his mouth to ask for details, and Tony was not above stealing all of Steve’s thunder, but he was interrupted before he could launch into the whole fascinatingly, _astronomically unlikely_ scenario by a familiar annoyed voice on the gangplank.

“ _Tony_!” Rhodey called, grabbing the gangway handrails and launching himself the last steps to the deck.

“How does he _do_ that?” Tony wondered aloud. He’d not only not even told Rhodey he was back in the states, but he’d specifically laid a false trail about leaving again in two weeks, so that he would be long gone by the time Rhodey transported his meddling ass up to New York. “Hi, huggybear,” he greeted brightly as Rhodey slid around Steve — who was standing adorably at the bottom of the stairs like he was protecting Tony — and yanked himself up two and three stairs at a time.

“I hear we’re getting ready to cast off,” Rhodey said, his voice deceptively casual. Tony could see the thunder in his eyes, the flash of rage so hot and bright that Tony could almost smell the ozone wafting off him. Steve came to the top of the stairs, peering over the banister in wary readiness. Tony indulged in a brief fantasy of giving Steve a silent sign and watching as Captain American came to his rescue. It was something he’d dreamt of so many times as a kid that he almost did it, even knowing that Rhodey would certainly be hurt in the process, and Steve would be angry with him in the aftermath. He winced, banished the intrusive image, and shook his head. Steve hesitated, but slid back down the stairs, so Tony turned his attention to Rhodey with the sharp smile he normally reserved for the media.

“Well, yes,” Tony said, checking his manifest list as if it contained all the answers to the secrets of the universe, “We, as in,” Tony clarified, gesturing between him and Bruce, “As in, me and my crew are getting ready to cast off.”

“No, what you _mean_ ,” Rhodey correct, “Is that _we_ are getting ready to cast off.” He sketched a circle with his forefinger to indicate everyone on board. “Isn’t that what you mean?” Rhodey crossed his arms over his chest and waited, chin tipped down so that he could give Tony that bull-eyed stare that usually resulted in Tony spontaneously deciding to do something that sounded a lot like something Rhodey wanted him to do.

“You,” Tony said, stalling the inevitable, “You are a colonel in the United States Air Force, _James_ , which means no—”

“I took a leave of absence.” Rhodey twirled his finger in a _next_ gesture.

“There are already too many people on board—”

“The airship that you designed to hold up to two dozen refugees if necessary? Too many people aboard that ship?”

Tony stopped, considered Rhodey’s words, and tried to remember if he’d actually told anyone that before. He didn’t think so, but he sometimes said things when he was drunk that he wished he hadn’t later. Rhodey was often there when he was drunk, so that was possible.

“Actually,” Tony correct, “It’s thirty, well, twenty eight if you and— you know what, that doesn’t matter. Why do you need to be here?”

“Tony,” Rhodey said very patiently, “You left the ship in the middle of combat—

Holding up both hands, Tony made a flustered noise, “There were _things_ , and I left on the auto-navigation, and—”

“— and almost crashed—”

“Was not even anywhere _close_ — _”_

“— into a mountain.”

“—At _least_ twenty… fifteen feet away.”

Rhodey let the conversation sit for several moments, tilting his head to one side, eyebrows lifted in silent Rhodey code for _do you even hear yourself talking right now_?

He took a breath that made his chest swell and refocused on Tony. “I think we all know how much I approve of you being out there alone—”

“Not alone,” Tony muttered.

“He’s actually not alone,” Bruce tried to put in. Tony perked up at the support and pointed at Bruce as evidence. Bruce immediately held up both hands, obviously regretting speaking up in the first place. Rhodey ignored them both.

“And doing every damn thing you can to get yourself killed, but I am not going to make it easy for you. I am an airship pilot. You need an airship pilot. Problem solved.” He clapped Tony twice on the shoulder and Tony, at least, had the decency to pretend to stumble under the force of it. “I’ll have my kit onboard by noon. You take off without me, and you will regret it.” He gave Bruce a charming smile, squeezed Tony’s shoulder in that special way that Tony really hated, but he’d never called Rhodey out on it because it was _Rhodey_ and Tony took what contact he could get. “Nice to see you again, Dr. Banner.”

“Look forward to having you onboard,” Bruce returned politely.

“Don’t forget my bacon ration,” Rhodey said in parting as he jogged back to the stairs, shoulders relaxed with his position on board secured. He clattered down the stairs and offered Steve a professional smile, holding his hand out. “Captain. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Sorry I didn’t stop to say hello before.”

Steve took his hand in a firm grip. From Tony’s position on the upper deck, it looked painful. Rhodey’s eyes crinkled at the corners the way he did when he was suppressing pain, but his shoulders didn’t tighten. Even with Steve casually, maybe even unintentionally, crushing his hand, he was thrilled to meet Captain America, who was every bit as much Rhodey’s childhood hero as he was Tony’s.

~*~

“I will have the London house aired out and order additional supplies for you to restock, sir,” Jarvis said. Tony recognized the hint of disapproval, just a tightening around his lips that no one else would likely notice.

“No, J,” Tony replied with a soft sigh.

“Sir, with so many people aboard, I could be of assistance,” Jarvis tried again, the stiff professionalism leaking out of his shoulders. He moved around the bed in a sudden burst of excitement. Tony loved that about him – he was so reserved and cool, but he had a lust for adventure that had inspired Tony’s own thrill-seeking as a child. He was resourceful and he’d been Tony’s partner in more than one expedition, his greatest support.

“Not this time, Jarvis,” Tony said, not looking at him. He concentrated on stacking clean clothing into his rucksack. Jarvis hesitated at the end of the bed and then reached out and put a hand on Tony’s wrist. His hand was wrinkled and spotted faintly with age, but the fingers still delicate, long and articulate, skin soft with care, nails carefully manicured. They were strong hands, equally capable of providing both comfort and protection.

“I know what you do on these expeditions, Tony,” he said softly, “I won’t judge you for it. I want to help.”

A fine shiver traced down Tony’s spine. He pulled out from under Jarvis’ hand, disguising the motion by grabbing a neatly folded undershirt from the pile. The shirt dropped out of the pressed rectangle and he shook it out to refold it. Jarvis watched him for a second and then reached forward and gently took the shirt away from him. He smoothed it out on the bed and quickly folded it back into its precise shape. He nudged Tony out of the way to finish packing the bag for him.

“I was never good with violence,” Jarvis said in a conversational tone as he packed the rest of the clothing into the stack. They would all come unmade as soon as Tony picked the sack up, but Jarvis still packed each article carefully. “When I was younger, when your father first hired me, I was…  well, quite honestly, I was a mess in a fight.” He looked up and gave Tony a sideways smile. “I got the job done, mostly, but I was never good at it.” Jarvis smoothed his hands across the clothing and zipped the sack up. “Not until your father put a tiny squirming baby in my arms and said, _Jarvis, I need you to keep him safe for me_. I got very good at violence after that, sir.”

Tony was grateful that Jarvis’ back was to him. He took a step backward, fiddling idly with the things on his bedside table – a priceless piece of African art, a gold Rolex, an abalone shell with a pair of opal and jet cufflinks nestled among three dollars and seventeen cents in change, and a photograph. Jarvis fussed with the coverlet while Tony rearranged the items on the table. He remembered Jarvis battering down a heavy barn door with a shotgun in his gentle, manicured hands. Three men dead, Tony turned away, hiding his face, the summoning construct he’d etched in the floor the only spot of warmth in the barn. He remembered Jarvis’ arms wrapping around him, his voice soft and gentle. _Your father is in Sweden, I’ve come to pick you up,_ like it was just a day at school _._ He’d always seen too much of Tony, known all of his soft places. Jarvis was quiet, and Tony banished the stray impulse to set his head on Jarvis’ shoulder.

Picking up the photograph, Tony approached the bed again. He tugged the strap of the bag out of Jarvis’ hand and replaced it with the golden frame.

“Jarvis,” he said softly, “I need you to keep her safe for me.”

Jarvis wrapped his hand more firmly around the photograph. It was his favorite photograph of Pepper, her hair up in a fancy do, pale fur nestled up around her jaw. Her smile was radiant as she looked over her shoulder at the camera.

Jarvis sighed heavily and nodded, looking down at Pepper’s pretty face with a tortured expression. Tony knew that Jarvis thought of Pepper like a daughter, that he’d held out hope for years that the two of them would get married and give him little grandbabies to spoil. Tony knew it wasn’t fair to put that burden on Jarvis’ shoulders, but he needed Pepper to be safe, and he didn’t trust anyone else. He needed Jarvis to be safe, and knew that Pepper could do it.

Pulling in another shaky breath, Jarvis said, “Yes, sir.”

Tony abandoned the room, leaving Jarvis standing at his bedside with the photograph between his hands. He slung the sack over one shoulder and pasted a smile on his face as Pepper rounded the corner.

“Mr. Stark,” she greeted, flashing her naturally, strangely straight teeth at him.

“Miss Potts,” Tony returned.

“I see you have a bag over your shoulder,” she observed, “As if you are not going to sit down and sign every piece of paper I have in my hands right now.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him in that dangerous way that didn’t bode well for him. She reached forward and took the bag away from him, replacing it with a thick stack of pages barely contained in a yellow folder.

“Have some pity on me,” Tony pleaded, but he was already flipping the file open as they walked, taking the pen from her. “I have a friend in need.”

“And while you do _your job_ ,” she said, “I am going to nicely go over that file with Steve and Natasha and help you come up with an actual plan.”

“You _are_ nice,” Tony agreed, messily scrawling his name on the bottom of one sheet and awkwardly flipping it over to initial the back, using his forearm as a writing surface. “It’s a good thing,” he commented, “that you aren’t out to get me, because I am not even reading this a little bit.”

“Oh, I put the pages where you sign your entire share of the company over to me at the back,” she said, setting his bag down on the coach and nudging him with one hand to sit at the bar. He did, trying not to remember the sound of Jarvis’ breath rushing out of his chest as he looked down at Pepper’s photograph. She put her delicate hands on Tony’s neck – not on his shoulders, but on either side of his neck, fingers cool on his pulse point – and leaned down to kiss his temple.

The guest room door opened before she took her hands away, and Steve walked out dressed in a pair of pale slacks, a white collared shirt left open at the throat, and a pair of burgundy suspenders. He had a tie draped over his shoulders, and carried a pair of brown leather shoes in one hand with the socks dangling out of one shoe like a tan tongue. The pants fit like they were tailored, but the shirt was too tight by at least half an inch across the shoulders. It was a mistake any tailor would die of embarrassment over, but Tony wanted to send them a fruit basket. Pepper took her hands away and Tony missed them immediately. He curled forward over the pages instead of leaning back toward her, knowing that she would notice if he tried to follow her hands.

“Thank you for the clothing, Miss Potts,” Steve said politely. His eyes flickered to Tony as he passed him to the couch. “I didn’t really think that through when I left my bag in Agent Coulson’s car.” He cleared his throat and shifted his weight around on the couch, ducking to put his socks on while Pepper chatted with him pleasantly. Tony watched Steve’s fingers as they rucked up the socks – he had long, artistic fingers, big hands, his nails neatly trimmed but not professionally done. His calves were revealed in a tantalizing sort of reverse striptease, fingers agile on the sock garters. Tony wanted to get on his knees and crawl across the living room to suck each of those long fingers into his mouth and lathe them until Steve whimpered his name.

Steve looked up and caught him staring. Tony stared him down, because Tony Stark did not guiltily turn away when he was caught ogling someone. Steve just smiled, finished tying his shoes, and joined Pepper at the bar where she had his file on Bucky spread at the end. Tony turned back to his own work, but he listened to them going over the pages, the quiet murmur of their plotting, the way Steve’s voice went flat when he described Bucky. Natasha joined them when Tony was half way through the pages, and Clint magically appeared ten minutes after Jarvis set dinner on the table, towing Rhodey and Bruce behind him.

Tony watched it all bemusedly as they sat around the dining room table. They’d never done this before – when they docked, the crew usually took off on their own while Tony stayed in his cabin and got drunk. They’d never sat down to dinner like some kind of giant family on a radio program. He wasn’t even sure there had ever been so many people at his table that weren’t paid to be there.

“Are you going to sit down, Tony?” Steve asked, twisting to look up at him once all the plates were served, even Jarvis seated at one end with Pepper instead of hovering over them.

“Do you see all these pages I have to sign under the terrifying threat of bodily harm?” Tony asked by way of reply, gesturing to the file of pages.

“Since when did you ever let work interrupt a social gathering?” Pepper said with a snort, a Pepper-y kind of permission to leave his work. She held a glass of wine with just three fingers, her red lipstick imprinted on the rim.

“We’re not going to start without you,” Steve said into the silence that followed. Tony noticed Clint surreptitiously setting down the forkful of mashed potatoes midway to his mouth. He rolled his eyes, but jotted his messy signature on the last few pages and took the seat at the head of the table. He looked over to see Steve’s gaze drifting around the table, his mouth pulled down in a soft frown, eyes liquid and unfocused beneath his lashes. Tony declared a loud toast before anyone else could notice, and Steve jerked himself out of whatever memory he’d fallen into and smiled a big, fake smile.

~*~

Tony regretted not returning to his cabin aboard the ship when a knocked sounded at the door just as we considering crawling into his bed. His mattress was very comfortable, but he probably hadn’t slept in it more than a few dozen times, exactly for reasons like someone knocking on his door at eleven at night. He checked to make sure his shirt was covering the arc reactor with none of the glow bleeding through, and opened the door.

Obie waited on the other side and gave Tony a big grin as soon the door opened. He opened his arms wide and clasped his hands on either side of Tony’s neck, shaking him gently. Tony clenched his jaw shut to keep from telling him to let go – this was Obie, who’d been there for him more than his own dad, and if he hadn’t always been as supportive and encouraging as Jarvis, he’d done more for Tony than most adults in his life. He forced a smile and didn’t pull away when Obie shifted his grip to hold onto Tony’s shoulders.

“Sorry it’s so late, kiddo,” Obie said, walking him back into the penthouse apartment, “But I hear you’re leaving first thing in the morning, and I wanted a chance to say goodbye.”

He finally let go of Tony’s shoulders, and Tony took a step away, forcing himself to let his breath out slowly so Obie didn’t hear him gasping for air in the wake of the physical contact. He diverted the gesture to the bar and poured Obie two fingers of his best scotch, handing it over without looking back at him. He poured a measure for himself and felt better fortified when Obie put his arm around him again.

“You can’t even stay a few days?” Obie asked after taking a drink. “I miss you, son, the company misses you.”

“I’m still working,” Tony pointed out. He’d just finalized three prototype long-range communication constructs and set them aside for Pepper less than hour before Obie knocked.

“I know,” Obie said dismissively. He let Tony go so they could sit at the bar. “It’s just not the same with you gone all the time. The board is getting restless the longer you’re gone on these ‘holidays.’ I’m trying to hold them off…”

“I appreciate it,” Tony said quickly, “And I know I said I would be back in town for at least two weeks this time, but this is an emergency. Matter of life and death.”

Obie shook his head, but he said, “You’re a good kid. You get that devil-may-care adventuring spirit from your dad, you know. He would have been out slaying dragons every day if I didn’t play the bad guy and keep him home sometimes.”

Tony made a vague noise and didn’t say that his dad definitely hadn’t been out slaying dragons, but maybe he had been fighting his own demons. Whatever it was that he was doing, it wasn’t _at home_. Tony took a sip of the whiskey to hide the downward tug of his lips. He made himself ask after company affairs that he felt guilty for not being interested in, promised to work on upgrades to the StarkTech heating constructs in the kitchen line, and that he would do his best to make some kind of social appearance to help uphold the lie that he was out partying and being irresponsible.

“We could just tell them what you’re really up to,” Obie prompted when Tony was a little too sharp with his responses.

“No,” Tony said. He reached up and rubbed at his temples. “No, you’re right. If it’s someone on the board we don’t want them thinking that I’m on to them. Have you had any leads on that?”

Obie made a frustrated noise, a low growling in chest. He shook his head. “They’re good, whoever they are. They’ve covered their tracks well.”

Tony nodded – he hadn’t expected much else, but it was frustrating, knowing that someone in his company was dealing behind his back and having to play stupid about it. Most days it sounded like a good idea to just burn it all to the ground and start over from scratch, completely empty the board of executives, fire his entire R&D team, and bring in fresh blood. Impulses like that were why he had Pepper, Jarvis, and Obie to manage things for him while he found people to take on in more conventional ways.

“Oh, before I go,” Obie said, interrupting himself in the middle of making his goodbyes, “Pepper said you had some new designs for R&D? I told her I would grab them while I was here, save her the trip.”

Tony retrieved the construct tubes and handed them over. “Thanks for everything, Obie.”

“Of course, kid. You know I’m here for you.”


	4. Chapter Three

**CHAPTER THREE:**

Steve stood against at the prow of the ship as they dropped below the cloud cover and London spread out under them. He leaned over the side with a clipboard braced under his elbow, quickly sketching out lines. The city was beautiful from the air with the Thames snaking in between uneven wedges of tightly packed buildings. From so far above, it looked like one of Tony’s complicated pieces of construct machinery.

“I can take a photograph if you’d like,” Bruce offered, stepping up to Steve’s side. He put his hands on the railing and leaned over to watch as they descended on the city. Three other airships were visible on the horizon, their sails lit up gold in the morning light, lining up for the public aeroport. Bruce kept a careful and precise distance of two and a half feet between them where they leaned against the railing. Steve had observed that he maintained the same distance with everyone except Tony, and he wanted Bruce to feel comfortable telling him why.

He’d known everything about his Commandos, more than any other commander knew about their unit, probably more than most of the men knew about themselves – it was important, knowing those things about them, so he could talk them through the bad times, so he knew who was best for a job, and so he could guess when a day’s work would give one of them nightmares. He felt himself reaching out to the crew of _The Iron Avenger_ in that same way, and had to keep reminding himself that they weren’t his Commandos. He couldn’t sit shoulder-to-shoulder with them after a nightmare and quietly talk about their lives and their homes until they felt better. He missed it so badly that it was a physical ache in his chest, that closeness that he wanted but hadn’t earned. It made him anxious sometimes, thinking about how long it took to get so close to his men, like building a castle only to find it fallen in during the night and having to start again with broken stones. Reaching out to a new team felt like a betrayal of his Commandos; even knowing they would never see it that way, it made it hard for him to bridge the gap with Coulson’s team, made him feel guilty to reach out to the crew of _The Iron Avenger_ like they could replace what he’d lost.

“It’s alright,” Steve said finally, “I like drawing. Since waking, I’ve been keeping a journal of the places I’ve gone. The world is…” Steve looked up sideways at Bruce, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s big. Me and Bucky used to talk about going to China. Well, we just called it ‘the Orient’ then, and it was the most fantastical, wild place we could think of.”  

He swiped a line across the page, quickly describing a whole neighborhood in a few hatch marks, using the distraction as an excuse to catch his breath. Bucky was out there somewhere while Steve reminisced on childhood fantasies of catching Chinese dragons. He cleared his throat. “If only we’d known how big the world really is. How wild and amazing.”  

Bruce was quiet for a while, and Steve’s hand was blur over the page as he caught more details the closer they got to the private dock on top of Stark London. A man in impeccable livery waited on the dock, looking dignified and stiff despite the wind blowing his hair into a fluffy gray tornado. Steve sketched him out with a few lines and Bruce leaned over his elbow to see it closer. Steve was surprised to feel the man’s body heat against his arm, but he just lifted the pencil away so Bruce could see the drawing. He retreated and snorted in laughter.  

“Burns will ‘accidentally’ turn all of your underwear pink if he sees that.”

Steve smiled and lifted the clip on the board so he could fold the book closed. “I’ll be careful with it.”

~*~

Waiting had always been the hardest part of the war, knowing the enemy was just out of sight, that there was someone suffering, that every moment they sat huddled around the fire their enemy might be creeping up on some unsuspecting village. And sometimes, they had been the ones sneaking up on some unsuspecting base, and the soldiers were just sitting there, waiting. Steve understood waiting, but _Bucky_ was out there alone, and Tony was tearing through a closet of clothing the house kept for guests.

Tony examined a jacket, twisting it one way and then another. “No,” he said, tossing the jacket out to the carpet. Steve sighed and picked the jacket up. He reached over Tony’s shoulder to grab a hanger, slid it into the shoulders of the jacket, and draped it over the bed with the rest of rejects.

“Try this on,” Tony ordered, throwing a pair of dark pants at him. Steve caught the crotch of the pants with his face and made a soft, irritated noise as the legs wrapped around his neck.

“Is this really necessary?” he asked, pulling the fabric away and holding them up. He still had a hard time judging his own clothing in modern mass-produced sizes, but they looked about three sizes too big for him. “Can’t we just restock and leave?”

“Where are we going to go?” Tony responded vaguely, pulling another shirt down and holding it up. He discarded that one as well, and pulled down another. Looking over his shoulder, he ordered, “Chop chop, try on the pants.”

“Tony…”

Tugging another shirt out of the closet, Tony threw it at Steve. “Seriously, Steve, where are we going to go?”

“Germany?” Steve suggested, holding the bundle of fabric between his fists. “I know you’re doing me a big favor, Tony, but I don’t want to go out socializing when my friend is in trouble and needs me.”

Tony nodded like he was considering it, took the clothing out of Steve’s hands and held the shirt up to Steve’s chest, tugging on the shoulders to measure it against Steve’s body. Steve watched him, taking in the curve of his lips, the distance in his eyes. Just like with Bruce, Steve wanted to be able to reach out and ask what the problem was, what Tony was remembering to make him look so empty, but Tony was not one of his Commandos.

“It’s not a favor,” Tony said after a moment, “Doing this, it’s not a favor. It’s selfish. I have my own reasons.” He flashed a tight smile at Steve, “But if you want to say you owe me one for it, that’s fine with me.” He draped the shirt over Steve’s shoulders and took a step back. “We’re going to meet someone, and that someone will – with some good luck and a lot of cash – tell us who to talk to about finding your friend.”

Steve let his breath out slowly, and nodded, feeling silly and frustrated. He knew that the crew looked to Tony as a leader, but he couldn’t help feel responsible for them and the mission, and it was stifling not to have control. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Tony flicked his fingers dismissively, not meeting Steve’s eyes. “Sure. Just try the clothes on alright? I’m going to find you a hat.” He patted Steve’s chest in a quick rhythm and then turned on his heel and left the room.

Steve picked up the last two articles of clothing left strewn on the floor and slid them back onto hangers. The closet had been organized in some fashion, but Steve thought he would probably just mess it up even further if he tried to put it back in order, so he cleared out some space at the front and hung the clothing back up, leaving a gap so the staff wouldn’t have to hunt for the misplaced items.

The pants _were_ too big, dropping so low over his hips that they bordered on obscene. His suspenders kept them from falling down, but he still had to cinch a belt around his waist. The shirt was on the opposite end of ill-fitting and clung to every line of his torso like a second skin. Steve plucked at the clingy fabric as he left to find Tony, and barely caught a wool hat flying at his head as he rounded the corner.

“Why do you keep throwing things at me?” he asked, turning the gray tweed flat cap over in his hands.

“Because sometimes you don’t catch them, and that’s funny to me. Put it on.” Tony walked a circle around him and tugged at one of the suspenders, letting it go to snap against Steve’s back. “Perfect.”

“Perfect?” Steve asked incredulously, turning a circle with his arms spread out, “The pants are three inches too big and the shirt is three inches too small.”

“That’s what I said,” Tony quipped, smacking him across the bicep with the back of his hand. “Perfect! Well-” He leaned forward and yanked Steve’s sleeves up past his elbows. “Now you’re perfect.” He brushed his hands across Steve’s chest as if he were straightening the wrinkles out of a sheet. The motion of his arms pulled the fabric of his button-up shirt tight on his chest, revealing a peek of light beneath. Steve reached for it without thought, and Tony finally seemed to realize what he was doing. He jerked away from Steve in a smooth, practiced motion, turning on his heel to disguise the retreat. Steve let hands fall back to his sides.

“Coming, buttercup?” Tony called over his shoulder.

“Coming,” Steve answered with a slow exhale, shaking his head.

~*~

Tony wrapped himself up in a dirty wool overcoat. He had to hide it whenever he left town to keep Burns from cleaning it, and half the time Burns still sniffed it out. Tony’s most successful hiding place was a hollow in the wall beside the front door, but he was sure that Burns had heard him getting it out, so he would have to find a new place for it before they left. It was one of his best disguises _because_ it was dirty and worn, and he didn’t like rolling around in the grimy street just for verisimilitude.

“Where are we going, Tony?” Steve asked for the fourth time. Tony cast a look back at him. He looked wild and beautiful in the poor light, his arms and abs perfectly defined in the blue shirt, the loose pants accentuating his slim hips. In the right light, he could pass for a youthful Irish hoodlum, his accent peeking through a little more the longer they were surrounded by people who could readily understand him. Tony was sure that he _would_ have been an Irish revolutionary if he’d been born there, and he felt a crazy impulse to grab Steve’s hand and just run with the scenario, tear through the narrow, twisting streets like they were fleeing pursuit, laugh in the chilly air and breathe in each other’s laughter.

“Tony!”

Tony spun so abruptly that Steve crashed into him. He was solid and they stumbled in a messy circle, Tony grabbing Steve’s hips to steady him. “Do you always have to spoil everything?” Tony asked once they were on even footing.

“You said this wasn’t a social call.” His voice and his shoulders were equally tight, filled with a sort of restless tension that Tony understood too well – wanting to get out and smash things into submission. He hadn’t always understood that tension. Before the cave, he wouldn’t have recognized it all. He would have been annoyed, confused over why Steve couldn’t see the benefits of making sure they were smashing things in the most efficient way possible.

“Would you know what I meant if I told you we were going to Halborn?” Tony asked curiously, pushing away from him. He flipped his hat around and pushed up on the sagging brim so he could see Steve’s face. The construct street lights glowed a soft blue, but the flat cap cast Steve’s face in shadow. Steve’s eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his nose, creating an even deeper pool of shadow between them. “Not a thing, right?”

Steve let out a slow breath, stretched his neck one way, and then the other. “Halborn is a district in London surrounding High Halborn Street between St. Giles’ High Street and Gray’s Inn Road.”

Tony felt his jaw go slack as Steve continued on to list a few dozen facts about the area, giving the addresses of several restaurants and pubs, as well as historical context, tourist facts, and the names of celebrities who lived in the area, and then listing every street and it’s major intersections. Tony just let him keep talking, barely aware that they were in the middle of the street, stones in a river, people giving them sideways looks as they passed. Steve stopped speaking abruptly and ducked his head. He rubbed the back of his neck, and looked at Tony through his unfairly long eyelashes. Tony’s mouth moved soundlessly, impressed by the recitation, as good or better than he could have managed himself.

“I stand corrected,” Tony said. “Been here before?”

“Never,” Steve said. He laughed softly at himself and added, “I read a travel book.”

Blinking, Tony clarified, “How many times?”

“Just the once. I was bored in medical.” Steve shrugged his big shoulders, the motion pulling his shirt up to flash a slice of pale skin over his hip.

Tony shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out to pull the fabric down just for an excuse to brush his fingers over Steve’s warm skin. He laughed, shaking his head incredulously, and spun in a lazy circle to start walking again, reaching up to untuck his shirt as he went. He led Steve through several more streets, and then down a narrow alleyway, still shaking his head. A slim figure leaned against the wall midway down the alley and Tony affected a swagger as he angled to join her where she stood against the wall with a foot up on the stones.

“Well, hello beautiful,” Tony drawled, leaning a shoulder next to her. “Come here often?”

Behind him, Steve made a strangled, frustrated noise. “Tony, this isn’t the-”

“Looking for a good time, boys?” Natasha interrupted, lifting her head to give Steve a brilliant smile from beneath the brim of her hat. Her plum colored jacket was lined in pale fur, and it did kind things for her jawline. She hooked a finger around one of Steve’s suspenders and tugged him to her other side. Steve leaned a shoulder into the wall and curled his body without thought to shelter her from the wind. He made a good windbreaker.

“Find him?” Tony asked in a low voice. He darted his eyes questioningly the small façade of Ye Olde Mitre tavern cluttering up the alleyway.

Natasha rolled her eyes and then gave him a sweet smile. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said by way of answer, and then pushed off the wall. Tony fell into step behind her and followed Natasha’s example to link a finger through Steve’s suspender. There was a healthy inch and a half gap between the suspender and Steve’s stomach, but Tony nestled his hand up against the warmth of Steve’s abs anyway. He felt Steve’s muscles twitch beneath his fingers and intentionally rubbed a knuckle in a small circle before pulling his hand away. Steve followed next to him with his thumbs hooked in his belt, very obviously not reacting to Tony’s blatant advances. They settled in at a table and Tony left Steve and Natasha sitting side-by-side to order a round of dark pints.

Nestled at the back of the narrow space, a small man with an oversized mustache sat alone. He stood out as the only table with a single occupant in the crowded pub, ignoring the other revelers as he sipped at a glass of amber liquid and scratched in a book with the stub of a pencil. Tony paid for the drinks and left two of them with Steve and Natasha. He took the last pint and dropped unceremoniously into the chair opposite Danny “The Mouse” Abney.

Danny glanced up at through his blond lashes, eyes making it no further than Tony’s wrinkled shirt over his chest. He made an annoyed noise. “Table’s taken,” he mumbled.

Tony tutted, falling into this persona easy, a personality that had started as a kind of cover and somehow felt easier most days than being _Tony Stark, billionaire._ “I’m sure there’s still room for a _friend_ , Danny.”

Danny didn’t even look at him as he slithered out of his chair and made a break for it. Tony let him go. He sipped the foam off his pint and rustled in his pocket for a sheaf of paper and a fountain pen. He was just spitting the pen cap out of his mouth when Danny crashed back into his seat with a giggling Natasha in his lap. He tried to dislodge her, but she got one had hand under the table and Danny went very still. Natasha’s musical laughter faded, and Tony glanced up at a scraping noise to give Steve a slight nod. Steve twisted the chair around backwards to the table and straddled it easily, the loose pants giving him all the room he needed to maneuver.

“Let’s start again,” Tony suggested once Danny had settled down. “Hi, Danny. Remember me?”

Danny gave him a nervous smile. “Heya, Tony. What brings you to London?” He shifted restlessly under Natasha’s weight and hissed as she moved her hand. Tony bet that she had her fingers twisted in the cloth of his slacks to pull his balls up tight to his body. She’d played that trick on him only once, and he’d learned in a hurry to respect her personal space.

“Well, Danny, I’m just taking my friends out on the town, introducing them to my old buddies.” Tony sprawled back in his chair and sketched idly on a crumpled page. He made a brief gesture to encompass Steve and Natasha, and watched Danny’s throat convulse, his eyes darting to Steve’s bulging biceps, straining against the seams of his shirt. Tony fought down a smirk – like he’d said: Perfect.

“Nice friends you keep, Tony.” Danny gave him a weak smile. He straightened in the chair, stretching his neck and licking his lips. “What can I do for you?”

“Eager to do me a favor?” Tony asked, jotting a precise line across the page to join two construct shapes. He empowered the construct and the lines pulsed a deep, burning orange, sending up a waft of smoke. Danny’s eyes flickered over it and he leaned back in his chair. Natasha skimmed a hand down his arm and curled her fingers around Danny’s wrist. She got his hand up on the table and Tony casually nudged the glowing construct across the surface. Danny made a thin noise and tried to pull his hand away.

“You know I’m happy to do anything for you, Tony,” Danny said. Tony almost admired him, scared out of his mind and his voice barely shaking, even though he was sweating like a cold glass of whiskey on a warm day.

Tony lurched forward to plant his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand, spine curling into an indolent slouch. “I still don’t understand why you did it, you know,” he said conversationally, “You know I would have paid you twice what they did, protected you if you needed it.”

“Tony…” Danny whined, eyeing the construct.

“All in the past,” Tony assured him. “But I wondered if you might help me with something.” He nudged the construct again, and Danny briefly closed his eyes. “Hydra.”

Danny went painfully still. His eyes flickered between the construct and Tony. Next to him, Steve tensed and Tony could tell that he was getting nervous about the confrontation. He didn’t have any way to reassure him that they weren’t going to torture the weasel for information, so Tony just shifted in the chair until their knees touched under the table.

Laughing nervously, Danny asked, “W-what is-? What did you say it was?” His hand curled into a fist on the table.

“Don’t play coy, Danny, not after everything we’ve been through,” Tony warned softly.

“You can’t ask me this, Tony. Please, not this.” He hid his face against Natasha’s shoulder, his voice muffled in the fur. “I’m sorry for what I did, I’m sorry. But please, not that.”

Tony considered him carefully. Danny wasn’t the man to turn to in a fight, but he was fearless and useful in his specific way, the kind of man who knew a little bit of something about everything, or at least enough to point a well-paying friend’s nose in the direction of someone who did. He made information his business and information was always for sale. “You don’t have to tell me anything, just give me the name of someone who can.”

“What are you going to do to me if I don’t?” Danny demanded stubbornly. “What is this? Some kind of rotting hex? Will it boil my insides? Make my testicles fall off?” His voice dropped into an angry hiss.

Tony snorted. “You know me better than that,” he said, flicking the page again, making the lines shimmer on the page. “It’s a healing construct. You’ve seen me build them before.”

Danny looked down, eyes tracing over the familiar shape. He frowned in puzzlement and looked up at Tony. “Why?”

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” Tony asked. He could see it in the thinness of Danny’s cheeks, a certain hollowness, a lack of color that he’d tried unsuccessfully to hide with facial hair. “Without knowing what’s wrong with you, there isn’t a lot I can do, but it should help.”

Danny was quiet for a long minute. He reached forward and took the paper, glancing up at Natasha as she casually moved her hand to let him go. Tony caught the purse of her lips out of the corner of his eye, knew that she disapproved of giving up cards when they probably could have let Danny draw his own terrible conclusions about the construct until he fessed up, but Tony didn’t think it was necessary with him. He was also keenly, uncomfortably aware of Steve’s eyes on the proceedings, like carrying around an angel and knowing that every action was being recorded and judged.

Danny’s eyes reflected the amber glow of the construct. “Healing spells are expensive.”

They were expensive because they took a lot of energy, more energy than a destructive construct, and they were difficult to work – one connection out of place and anything from just not working to having the opposite effect could be the result. Tony shifted his shoulders under his coat in a shrug. He made another flippant hand gesture. “It’s yours…barely a doodle. Call it a gift. Now, give me a name that will lead me to Hydra and we can work out something to make sure you’re compensated for the trouble.”

“Tony…” His voice trailed off, gaze drifting back to the page. He closed his eyes, took a slow breath, and then looked up again, firming his lips. “You never heard this from me.”

“Of course not. Who here has seen you with billionaire eccentric Tony Stark?” He gave Danny a winning smile underneath his floppy hat, tugging at one frayed sleeve in illustration.

Danny nodded and relaxed marginally. He set the construct down, glanced up at Tony, and then pressed his palm over the glowing lines. He hissed as the construct burned into his skin, and Tony drew in a deep breath to cover up the pull of it on his chest. The arc reactor grew warm, rattling hard against his ribs, and he felt his tattoos lifting over his shoulders and collarbone, spilling down his chest. He breathed through it, let the energy go. Across from him, Danny shuddered and released his breath in a soft moan. His eyes drifted open.

Swallowing, he took several slow breaths. “Count Johannes von Welczeck.”

“The German Ambassador to France?” Natasha clarified, frowning.

Danny nodded. “He isn’t… _them_ , I don’t think,” he said lowly, “But he can point you in the right direction.” He looked up at Tony and then ducked his head. “Thank you.”

Tony tapped his fingers on the table in a quick rhythm, and then pushed his chair back. “Thank _you_ , Danny. I knew I could count on you.”

Natasha slid out of Danny’s lap and straightened her dress with a twitch of her hips. She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the forehead, leaving a smear of red lipstick behind. “Don’t be such a stranger,” she said with a smile that was frankly a little scary for being so sweet. Tony let her pass him and then tapped Steve on the shoulder. He’d been silent the entire conversation, assessing, doing his job without even realizing it. Tony just wanted him there for his biceps and the quiet sense of efficient power that he carried with him. Having muscle at the table was just a matter of formality, and normally it would have been Clint in his perpetually sleeveless vests, but Tony didn’t think Steve would have sat quietly at home waiting for them to return with news.

Steve stood, politely flipped his chair around, and pushed it into the table. He touched the brim of his hat and smiled at Danny, an expression that wholly changed his aura from vaguely menacing to trustworthy and calming. “Thank you, Danny, you’ve been a great help. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Y-You too,” Danny replied, obviously flustered.

“See you around, Danny. I’ll make sure you’re compensated for the evening.” Tony winked and held out an arm to get Steve to move toward the door where Natasha was waiting for them under the glow of an old fashioned flame lantern.

The night air was bracing. Tony paused outside, taking a deep breath to banish the last of the tingling warmth of the healing construct. “I’ll get Pepper and Jarvis to set up something in Paris. A Stark party is worth the attention of an ambassador, I would think.”

Natasha made a vague noise of agreement and drew a long filter out of her pocket. Tony pulled out a cigarette case – he didn’t smoke himself, not any longer, but he always carried them for others. She accepted one of the tubes, each one carefully worked with a tiny healing construct to counteract the harmful effects of smoke inhalation. She winked at him as she fit it to the filter, a private smile stretched on her lips, an acknowledgement of his absurdity. She lit the cigarette and Tony hummed to displace the brief flair of discomfort on the back of his neck. Natasha walked away as she pulled on the filter.

“That was a nice thing you did for him, Tony,” Steve said after a minute. “What did he do to you? Before?”

Tony shrugged. “Nothing much.” He gave Steve his cheerful media smile. “Just sold me out and nearly got me killed is all.”

~*~

They were leaving Calais on the horizon when Tony made an interested humming noise at Rhodey’s side. At the stern sketching the city and the quickly fading Channel, Steve glanced up. He was becoming attuned to Tony’s noises – morning grunts that meant, _hello, how are you? Feed me coffee_ , a clicking noise of his tongue on the roof of his mouth when something wasn’t precisely the way he wanted, the rush of his breath when he covered up pain, and the range of humming noises that could mean anything from solving a problem to finding a new one. Steve dashed a pair of sloppy lines across the page to complete the sketch and wrote _Calais from the Stern, 1937_ in neat print. His pencil hovered over the last number and he stared at it for several seconds – 1937, what an impossible number.

“Rhodey, adjust our heading twenty-seven degrees north by northeast.”

Steve shook off the lingering wonder and closed his sketchbook. He joined Tony and Rhodey at the helm, looking over the array of instruments and trying to pinpoint what had caught Tony’s attention before he had to ask. It was becoming a contest between them that Tony didn’t even realize he was winning.

“I know you want to be in Germany as of yesterday,” Tony said distractedly, eyes flickering briefly to Steve, “But I’ve got a lock on something of mine not where it’s supposed to be. Quick detour, just running to the corner grocery,” he said nonsensically as he pulled a rolled map out of the cubby at his feet and spread it on the elevated desk.

“Can I help?” Steve asked, watching Tony dart his hand over the map with a pencil, making neat, light marks with his eyes locked on the silver pendulum swinging on a sling at his side.

“Go wake up the crew,” Tony said, stuffing the pencil into his mouth and slipping the map under the cradle. The pendulum strained hard to right, and kept straining as Tony moved the map slowly beneath it. Finally, it arrowed onto a point near the Belgium boarder and followed it as Tony shifted the map this way and that. “’Fwell ‘em ‘re’are ‘or baffle,” Tony said around the pencil. When Steve only gave him a lifted eyebrow in response, he spit the pencil out and repeated, “Tell them to prep for battle.”

Steve’s pulse kicked up in his chest and he felt a rush of guilty excitement as he abandoned the helm and made a run for the lower decks. Since joining SHIELD, he’d been a part of several operations, but no combat operations, all just recovery and clean up. The understanding twisted and writhed in his stomach, but he had to admit that he missed the rush and press of battle. Never the killing or the aftermath, but that heart pounding reminder that he was alive and still capable of dying. He didn’t know what that said about him that he only felt alive when his life in danger, but he accepted it as calmly as he could and worked with it.

Using the side of his fists, he banged hard on Natasha’s and Clint’s doors, waiting only until he heard the rustle of movement beyond to shout, “Up! Battle stations!”

He waited a moment longer and then moved on when he heard a curse out of Clint’s quarters, and the thud of Natasha’s feet on the floor. He found Bruce in the mess hall, swaying faintly in his seat and mid-yawn as Steve yanked the door open. Apparently too groggy to be startled, Bruce finished the cat-like yawn and then gave himself a shake and looked up at Steve through bleary eyes.

“Tony has found something near Belgium and wants the crew assembled.”

Bruce squinted at him, stretched his spine out, and asked, “Did he say me specifically?”

Steve shook his head. “Just to get the crew.”

Nodding around another yawn, Bruce waved him away. “Tell him I’ll be in the engineering bay if he needs me.” He offered Steve a wan smile. “Better get suited up, Captain. Knowing Tony, things are going to get exciting.”

~*~

“Guard this with your life,” Tony ordered, shrugging out of his great coat and throwing it into Rhodey’s arms.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked, alarmed, as Tony started stripping out of the rest of his clothes right there on the pitching deck _in the middle of a battle_. Tony just grinned at him, and Steve hastily lifted his shield to deflect a burst of golden orange energy away from Rhodey, who ducked and cussed.

Guiding the ship in a zig-zagging pattern that made it sway beneath the balloons, Rhodey hunkered down in the rigging. He tossed at glance at them, and then pointed at Tony. “Stay out of the rigging.”

Rhodey swiped the back of his hand across a control construct and a shimmering blue shield snapped over the console, sealing him in and protecting him from all but the most concentrated of attacks. He didn’t seem at all worried that his best friend was getting naked with projectile energy flying all around them. Not knowing what else to do, Steve positioned himself at Tony’s side and kept track of the flying constructs, doing his best to direct energy bursts back at them instead of up into the rigging.

Tony, naked as the day he was born, sauntered past Steve to the railing. He turned and gave Steve a wink over his shoulder, and then smacked both of his palms into his stomach. His arc reactor flashed a searing blue white, and ink rose up across his entire body, tracing intricate lines and patterns down his spine, over his arms, twisting around his thighs, disappearing into the arches of his feet. Steve watched in awe as the tattoos went from jet black to smoldering ember, glowing brighter and brighter until Tony seemed to be on fire. What looked like blood but smelled like hot iron bubbled through Tony’s pores and solidified over his skin – pouring molten down the lines of his back, creeping up his neck, cupping his genitals, gloving his hands.

When the glow faded, Tony waited just long enough for Steve appreciate him, monstrous and glorious in equal measures, the devil with a gilt halo. Tony set two fingers to his forehead in a brief salute and then whooped like a child and folded backward over the railing, quickly vanishing into the thin air. Steve shouted in wordless denial, bowled over sideways by the parallel to another airship, Bucky tumbling silent over the side to a snowy canyon a hundred feet below. Steve thought he was going to be sick. He stumbled to the railing, forgetting the constructs and their energy bursts, Clint in the nest, Rhodey behind his flight shield. Steve was conscious of deflecting blasts, but he couldn’t even hear them over the sickening rush of his own pulse.

A streak of red and gold made him jerk upright just as he leaned over the rail. Surrounded in a haze of magic, Tony shot up past the ship and performed a neat roll, catching one of the sentry constructs with a pulse of blue white light, sending it spiraling back to the ground in black smoke. Steve watched Tony move in the air, graceful as a dancer, but his heart rate didn’t slow. He clenched his jaw hard, tracked one construct aiming for a low pass over the exposed deck, timed it against wind resistance and the motion of the ship, took three running steps, and vaulted over the console and the railing to the lower deck. He landed shield-first on the construct’s back and bore it to the planks with a howl, taking a vicious sort of pleasure in the sound of shattering glass and grinding metal. Natasha stepped calmly out of his way as he slid several feet, fetched up against the railing, and then stood to smash the edge of the shield into the sentry’s weakly ticking body.

“Stark jump off the ship again?” Natasha guessed, aiming for one sentry with her rifle.

“Does that a lot?” Steve guessed, keeping his eyes moving, looking for the next target.

She squeezed off a measured shot. The sentry went down and she twitched her lips in a pleased smile, and then shrugged. “At least we have someone at the helm this time.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but a flash of movement interrupted him. He yanked Natasha away from her post and folded his shield arm around her. The energy burst smacked into the shield with a high-pitched _swang_ , instantly –though briefly- numbing Steve’s arm from his wrist to his elbow.

“Thanks,” Natasha said sweetly, shimming out of his grasp and returning to her post. She grabbed the stationary rifle again and took out the offending construct with two aimed shots, the rapport of the rifle loud in a sudden stillness of the wind. A formation of the sentries rounded the wings and Steve set himself for another bout, enjoying the gust of the wind at his back, and the rush of his blood pounding hard through his veins.

~*~

“Good fight, nice job, insert additional praise where necessary,” Tony said as he landed, pulling the armor back into his body, tattoos stinging as his sweat dripped over them, each one like an open wound when they were activated. He left the faceplate for last because pushing the armor out felt like he was being skinned, but pulling it back in was like taking a nap on a hot griddle. He bit into the mouthpiece until his teeth ached, disengaging the vocals with a thought to keep any stray noises out of the wind. He knew that the team was talking around him, but he couldn’t make out more than the general murmur of voices. It was comforting in a way, not being alone while he drew the armor back in, and it kept him from screaming his head off. That was a plus.

The cowl sank into his neck, searing into the vertebrae. He released the mouthpiece, and the whole faceplate drew backward to fold into the space between his shoulder blades. He rotated his shoulders, stretching, and pretended he wasn’t paying attention as an excuse for not catching his great coat, but really his fingers just weren’t ready to flex closed. He let the coat pool at his feet, and made a production of the stretching, avoiding Steve’s narrowed eyes, Rhodey’s exasperated purse-of-the-lips. Clint watched him with a smirk because he could, but Natasha’s gaze was much more assessing than Tony would have liked. Every time he put the armor away, he imagined that she was sliding one more piece into the puzzle. Eventually she would figure out what it did to him to use it, but he still wasn’t sure what she would do with the information.

As soon as it felt like his knees weren’t going to explode if he moved them, he leaned over to collect the coat and shrugged into it with exaggerated style, rolling each shoulder, sliding his hands down the lapels and into the pockets to hide the way they shook.

“Anything else, or can I go put some clothes on?” He ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure his mouth wasn’t bleeding, and then pulled out a sharp smile.

“Who says you need clothes?” Clint asked with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. Tony usually flirted back, but he couldn’t find the energy. He gave Clint a tired wink for his efforts, and let his mind wander while he fought back the sting of putting the suit away. He eyed Clint speculatively while the rest of the crew talked and wondered what he was trying to accomplish with the aggressive flirting – that was Tony’s shtick, and he recognized revenge flirting when it was shoved at his, admittedly, irresistible body.

Tony fiddled with the buttons on his coat to get his fingers moving and ran down a list of the people they had in common, analyzing each for how likely they were to be jealous or irritated by Clint flirting specifically with _him_. It couldn’t be Natasha or Bruce - they wouldn’t care, and Steve and Rhodey didn’t match the timeframe of Clint’s slowly escalating shenanigans. There was a very long list of people who hate that their ex was flirting with Tony, but not many who also moved in Clint’s circles. Fury would be incandescent if he caught his paramour with Tony, but putting ‘Fury’ and ‘sex’ in the same sentence made Tony’s stomach all wobbly. The only other person he could think of was Coulson, and Tony wasn’t even sure that all his parts _worked_ , the man was so married to his job. But then again, he was Clint’s superior, and _something_ had driven Clint out of SHIELD’s loving arms and onto Tony’s pirate ship.  

Tony tugged on his coat to move his shoulders, and smirked as Clint’s eyes followed the motion, drifting down Tony’s chest. He pointed casually at Clint’s nose, interrupting the conversation without hearing it. “Keep it up, buddy, and I’m going to tattle on you to Coulson for sexual harassment.” It was the newest buzz word in the corporate world as women settled in more firmly in the workforce. Many of his dad’s old cronies were having a hard time understanding why patting a lady’s ass in the office was Not Okay. Stark Industries put all their employees through mandatory training yearly, but Tony maintained that the wrath of Pepper was probably enough to keep most people in line.

Rhodey shifted his weight and pinched the bridge of his nose, snorting in disbelief, but Clint’s eyes flashed in petty pleasure. Coulson it was, but Tony would congratulate himself later. His legs had stopped shaking, but he could already feel the ache of the armor resettling in his bones. He needed to get below and to his quarters for at least a few minutes while the others got ready to walk through the enemy base, now conveniently clear of enemies. Tossing a wave around the circle and pointedly not looking at Steve’s glaring face, Tony sauntered through the group to the stairs. He passed Bruce going down and patted him on the chest as they turned to slide around each other. Bruce reached out to steady him with one hand, warm palm lingering on Tony’s ribs in a silent offer of assistance. Tony mutely brushed him off, but gave him a smile to say _I’m fine_. Bruce rolled his eyes in a response that meant, _Of course you are, you idiot_ , and that was the end of the conversation.

Tony heard Steve’s heavy footfalls catching up to him as he came within sight of his door. It was too much to hope for that he would make it to the door before Steve snared him, or that he could pretend he hadn’t noticed the other man and just shut the door in his face.

Steve caught him by one shoulder and Tony expertly hid the shudder, the indrawn breath, the wince of pain. He transformed all of those things into a sound of brief annoyance, turning hard enough to knock Steve’s hand off his shoulder. He really, _really_ hated being grabbed by the shoulder. Obie got away with it because he was Obie, and no matter how many candles were on Tony’s birthday cake, he would always be a five year-old staring up at Uncle Obie the Giant. Rhodey got away with it because he was _Rhodey_ , and Tony owed him getting away with things after all the shit Rhodey put up with from him. But Tony didn’t owe Steve anything.

“You were reckless, today, Tony,” Steve said, mouth pulled down into an unhappy moue. He did the disappointed frown well enough that he should have his own series of propaganda posters. Oh, wait – he already did.

“Get to the point, Rogers,” Tony suggested.

“What were you thinking, just throwing yourself off the ship? You could have at least warned me!”

“I can _fly_ in case you didn’t notice.” Tony bristled. It might feel like being skinned and then burned alive to handle the suit, but it was worth it for the flying. Tony didn’t care if it really was taking years off his life, poisoning him from the inside-out, it was all worth it for the flight, the ability to protect the people who needed his protection.

“I _did_ notice,” Steve said, “I also noticed that you were like a bull buffalo on a rampage up there! How many times did you get hit?”

Tony blinked at him. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Crowding him back against the bulkhead, Steve looked him over with a critical, clinical eye.

Tony didn’t think he’d ever been given such a thorough once-over that didn’t end with _wanna fuck_? He shivered. Steve reached out with a gentle hand and grabbed the lapel of his jacket between two fingers. He glanced up at Tony for permission, waiting patiently for Tony’s brief nod before pulling the jacket aside. His eyes ghosted over the deep bruises Tony knew would be peppered over his ribs, the welts that his tattoos left when they were activated hot and fast, the burn down his hip where a point-blank blast from a sentry had superheated the suit.

“You should take better care of yourself,” Steve said, his eyebrows pulled into a tight furrow over his nose, voice low and intense with something Tony didn’t understand and couldn’t quantify. “You’re important.”

Tony snorted. “According to whom?” he asked, because he couldn’t _not_ respond to something like that, and he couldn’t not respond like a jackass to something like that.

Steve’s eyes flickered up, flinty. “According to me,” he said in a gravelly voice. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Tony panicked and reached up to silence him the best way he knew how. He clasped both hands on either side of Steve’s neck and slammed their mouths together, not even a kiss so much as it was an attack. _Shut up shut up shut up_ , he wanted to say, but let his tongue do it for him. Steve froze briefly against him, hands stiff on Tony’s hips, body tense with surprise. Tony expected him to yank away and run, or get angry and change the direction of their argument, but Steve stayed against him, slowly shuffling closer. Surprised, but not about to turn him away, Tony softened his lips, adjusted the angle of his chin, and coaxed Steve into the kiss, gently prying him away from whatever insufferably noble thing he’d been about to say. Steve turned to Jello in his hands, melting against him in a sudden rush, big body pushing Tony back into the bulkhead, hands tightening on his hips, teeth closing on Tony’s lower lip in a practiced, sensual nip. 

 _So much for the myth about Captain America’s purity_ , Tony thought, obviously suffering from severe hypoxia, because he felt giddy, wanted to laugh, _did_ laugh, choking on a howl of disbelieving mirth around Steve’s tongue. Steve pulled back to look at him through half-lidded eyes, beautifully swollen lips quirking into a cautious smile.

It was the smile that did it. Tony pushed aside the ache of his bones working to reabsorb the armor, and tightened his arms around Steve’s neck. He dragged him down roughly, their lips coming back together in a demanding push, Tony fumbling behind him for the latch to his door. He cussed onto Steve’s tongue, and Steve reached over to help him, dragging his mouth away from Tony’s lips to suck on his neck. Tony whimpered, shivers chasing over him, and he would have stayed against the wall and just let Steve continue his casual cannibalism, but he knew that Clint or Rhodey would come looking for him soon.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Tony said, grabbing Steve’s face and kissing him harshly as he shoved the door open.

“We can wait,” Steve offered, but he didn’t take his hands off of Tony’s hips, didn’t hesitate to follow him into the room.

“No way.” Tony kicked the door shut and shoved Steve against it, fumbling with the brass buttons on his vest. “Too many damn buttons,” he cursed, two seconds away from just ripping it off.

Steve might have read his mind, because he knocked Tony’s hands away and did it himself, leaning forward to seal their mouths back together, his clever fingers working the buttons open in a flash. Tony took advantage of the newly created opening, diving his hands directly into Steve’s pants to yank out the hem of his shirt. Steve’s stomach muscles clenched under his fingertips and Tony’s murmured an apology – his hands were always cold for hours after he put the armor away.

Shrugging out of his jacket and nearly tripping on it, he walked Steve away from the door until he hit his desk. They stayed there for several long seconds, Tony pressed into the edge of it while he tore hastily at the lacings on Steve’s pants. He was wearing too much clothing for Tony’s tastes, and he wanted to strip him bare and just look at him, examine every inch of his skin under firelight, but the clock on the wall sounded loud and rushed in the relative silence. Tony finally got the laces open and Steve struggled out of his vest so he could get the suspenders off his shoulders, teeth still leaving tiny, white-hot bruises down Tony’s neck. There would be no covering it up, but Tony found that he didn’t mind in the slightest.

Scrabbling in the topmost drawer, Tony found a small bottle of mineral oil that he used as a machine lubricant for his mechanical constructs. He had a thicker personal lubricant in the bedside table, but he didn’t want to let Steve go for even the second it would take to retrieve it, and the mineral oil was safe. He slammed the bottle onto the desktop and pushed Steve away just far enough to turn around and brace his hands the desk.

Steve made an endearing noise, a low appreciative whine mixed with a heartfelt groan, like Tony was something he needed the way other men needed air. His hands were gentle, reverent, and it made Tony shudder with _want_ , but he couldn’t let himself fall into the illusion of affection, didn’t have time to figure out what that gentleness meant. He shoved himself back against Steve’s body, dropping to his elbows to get the leverage.

“I want to see your face while I’m inside you,” Steve said, but he was already pressing oiled fingers against Tony’s entrance, his opposite hand tightening on Tony’s hip, tight enough to leave a mark. The anticipation of the bruise was enough to make Tony see stars. He set his forehead on the desk just to catch his breath, but sank into the shivery sensation of Steve working him open with his big fingers, twisting and curling until he found Tony’s prostate, and then massaging over it with a single minded intensity that made Tony squirm.

“Can you turn around?” Steve requested softly. He had an entirely unfair advantage, rubbing his fingers over that tiny, hungry place inside of Tony, making it hard for him to think. He shook his head in denial, but he reached for the window even as Steve gave in to his refusal and pulled his fingers out to replace them with something so much better. He was _big_ and the press of him made Tony jerk spasmodically, his fingers smearing through the condensation on the window. He trembled, lifting onto his toes to direct Steve’s progress, making small, needy sounds against his teeth.

“So good,” Steve praised, leaning over to mouth a clumsy kiss between Tony’s shoulder blades, tongue unknowingly tracing over the curved line of the hidden tattoo that connected his heartstring to the arc reactor. He twitched in reaction, gasping around a sharp noise as the reactor hummed in response. Steve fumbled around him to cover the reactor with one giant hand, and sank his teeth into that spot as if he _knew_. The reactor pulsed warmth through his limbs and Tony bit down on a whimper.

“Beautiful,” Steve whispered like he meant it. “I wish I could see what your face looks like right now.”

Tony swallowed. He wasn’t sure he could handle Steve’s eyes on his face, but he reached for the window again, trusting Steve to hold him up so he could use the opposite hand to steady himself. He traced quick lines through the fog as Steve started to move in gentle rocking motions, distracting him and forcing him to start over.

“Hold still,” Tony snapped. Steve immediately went very still, and Tony instantly regretted it. He made a sound low in his throat like a whine and pushed his hips back. He quickly completed the construct, breathed over it, and slammed his palm into it. The tattoos on the back of his hand flared to golden life, tracing up his forearm in vines and sharp points. The window shimmered and the surface turned reflective, giving him a startling view of his own eyes, Steve’s shocked face above him, and _God,_ Steve looked thoroughly debauched and _lovely_ , his hair escaping from the elastic, clothing half open and rumpled.

“Perfect,” Steve praised, “Thank you.” He swooped down to leave a stinging bite on the back of Tony’s neck, and then pulled back and shoved into him hard enough to rattle the desk against the bolts holding it fast. He picked up a punishing pace, maybe as conscious of the tick-tick-tick of their borrowed time as Tony was, but maybe it was just _him_ moving the way a body like his was meant to move. Tony gasped and clenched his eyes shut, hands scrabbling at the edge of the desk, seeking any kind of purchase to keep himself from falling apart under the onslaught.

“Look at me,” Steve demanded. Tony shook his head and bit into his lip. Steve’s hand crashed hard into the mirror and he leaned down to mouth at Tony’s shoulder. “ _Look at me_.”

Tony’s eyes flew open in surprise and he locked gazes with Steve’s reflection, his blue eyes seeming to burn with the lights tossed all around the room by the mirror. Maybe it wasn’t the lights at all, maybe his eyes glowed like that all on their own.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve said, voice gentle for all that his body was corded tight and driving Tony mad. “Perfect.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Tony said, but what he meant was _you’re perfect_ , and he might have agreed to anything then. He wedged a hand under his hips, working himself hard and rough, and couldn’t bring himself to look away from Steve’s eyes even when his own started burn. He shot his opposite hand forward to brace on the mirror and Steve slid his big palm down to lace their fingers together.

Heat built up in his toes, not unlike the searing burn of calling the armor out. For a second he was worried that he _was_ calling the armor out, but it was just the furnace of Steve’s eyes on his, the heat of his body, the rasp of his breath. Tony finally wrenched his gaze away, clenching his teeth hard to stifle his noises, and fell straight through the deck, plummeted through a thousand feet of empty air, and shattered on the rocks below. The entire world sparked red, and gold, and white while Tony’s attention narrowed to the pulse of his orgasm. Steve’s fingers pried his hand away from the glass and he used the grip to tuck Tony tight into his body, sinking his teeth into the space between Tony’s shoulders as his hips stuttered, lost rhythm, and pushed him hard into the desk. Steve was suspiciously quiet as he came, and Tony peeled his eyes open to watch him strain against the tide, lips parted in a soundless scream.

Steve jerked twice, struggled to catch his balance, and then collapsed to Tony’s back. If his hand wasn’t in between the arc reactor and the desk, the pressure would have been unbearable, but with the buffer it was only uncomfortable. Tony let Steve rest there for a moment, and was grateful when Steve moved off of him before he had to say anything. They slid to the floor in a messy heap, Steve alternately gasping for the air and laughing in a simple expression of joy.

“That,” Tony said once he caught his breath, “Was not your first time.”

Startled, Steve burst into real laughter. He wiped one hand down his face and used the opposite arm to drag Tony into his chest. “No,” he confessed, “Not my first. Disappointed?”

“Oh, very,” Tony deadpanned, “Absolutely devastated with disappointment. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“History has made up a lot about me,” Steve said after a second, pausing to swallow and take a deep, cleansing breath, “But the one about virginity always makes me laugh.” He pushed himself up with one elbow and moved so he had his back to the desk, Tony’s head resting on his chest so he could hear the thundering beat of Steve’s pulse. “I grew up in a rural little village. We didn’t have radio, or theme parks, or bowling allies. We had cows, and cabbage, and sex.” He laughed. “As long as you didn’t get caught by the priest.”

Fascination prickled through the lazy indolence of afterglow and Tony opened his mouth to ask if all three of those things often happened at the same time, but a firm rap on the door made him click his teeth together.

“Whenever you two are done scaring the birds into new migratory paths,” Clint called, “Feel free to join us. We’re ready to hit the base.”

They held their breath while Clint’s footsteps faded down the corridor, and then broke into helpless laughter like teenagers caught in the boathouse.


	5. Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR::

The wards on the door were good, because the wards on the door were Tony’s. He set his hand against the heavy metal plate and felt the familiar white-hot rage flush through him – they were _his_ and they were meant to safeguard life, they were being subverted and used at cross purpose. Instead of making him scream and howl, the rage just made him go cold. Calm settled on his shoulders and he fell into the construct, feeling his tattoos lift to the surface as they identified a sympathetic signature. He focused on the lines, the precise pattern of energies that reorganized the universe into a shape that sang _protect_. Wards were his forte, each one subtly unique. This one was meant for a hospital. He took slow breaths, sucking in the cold air, letting it out just as cold.

“Stark, can you-”

“Let him work,” Bruce interrupted Clint in a sharp, soft voice that Tony barely heard.

He was peripherally aware of them, but his whole consciousness was the building. He was every angle, every window, every arch, knew all the places were the foundation was weak, the section on the second floor that was ready to collapse if the support beams weren’t repaired. The ward was massive, linked in with two other constructs he’d intended for banks, and one that wasn’t his. That one was like a blight, a surly, pouting beast lurking among the pack. He bullied it into submission, reorganizing the main energy conduits so they flowed _around_ instead of _through_ , deconstructed the grounding line, and snipped it out of the weave. It was still there, stubbornly warding a section of wall three feet-by three feet, but it wouldn’t interact with the security system any longer.

With a fierce grin, Tony said to the wards, _Mine_ , and the wards opened up to him and said, _Yes_. He leaned his hip against the door, unintentionally hitting the mark left by the possessive grip of Steve’s hand on him. It washed over him again in a sudden flood of tactile memory, Steve’s hands, the sting of his teeth sinking into Tony’s shoulder. A bolt of electricity sparked through him that had nothing to do with energy and constructs. He lost control of the flow of energy and the construct pulled on him, overloading an augmented panel. The shock knocked him sharply out of the spiral of horror and arousal. He jerked his hand away from the door and shook it out, popping his finger into his mouth to soothe the sting. It had seemed so right at the time, being called beautiful, perfect, but the words echoed harshly in his head with the haze of lust gone, and he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“Okay, Tony?” Bruce asked, watching him carefully.

Tony noticed the mirth hiding in the corner of his lips, the touch of concern in his eyes, and kept himself carefully from looking at Steve. He turned his mind away from the confusing reality of what he’d thought was a casual post-battle fuck maybe meaning a lot more to Steve than it had meant to him. He nodded and took his finger out of his mouth. “All clear.”

“Anyone inside?” Steve asked, all the blinding passion gone from his voice, but Tony could still hear the ghost of it lurking underneath.

“What do I look like? A psychic?” Tony asked, tone sharper than he’d intended. Steve gave him an assessing look, and Tony had the unnerving impression that Steve understood why his tone was sharp even when he didn’t really understand it himself. “The wards can tell me the outer dimensions of the building and anything else they’re connected to, but they don’t sense people.”

“You’d think they would have come running out to shoot us by now if there was anyone here,” Clint said as he yanked the door open and darting a quick peek around the frame with his bow drawn, an electric torch fixed to the end.

“Could be waiting for reinforcements,” Steve suggested, setting his back to the wall beside the door and peering around Clint. He nodded once and Clint darted in to the left, Steve crossing behind him to the right with his shield out.

“All the more reason for you boys to hurry your pert asses up and get back to the ship,” Natasha suggested, her voice tiny from the communications mirror affixed to Tony’s shirt, painted over with a purple glaze so it wouldn’t accidentally reflect light and give them away.

“Any movement up there?” Tony asked by way of reply as he followed Steve through the door with a gun drawn and pointed at the floor. He preferred to be in the armor for things like this, but he wasn’t ready to pull it out again after the morning’s battle. Bruce ambled in after him with his hands in his pockets – he didn’t like guns and wouldn’t carry one, but he had a proven method of dealing with the enemy’s guns, so Tony had never protested.

“All clear,” Rhodey finally answered for her, and Natasha made a vague noise of agreement. She was stashed up in the nest with the Breda 30 light machine gun Tony had acquired from an Italian mob house while retrieving a load of augmented explosives mysteriously stashed in their basement. He’d worked it for accuracy and range to fix its laughably obvious shortcomings, and then gave it to her as a birthday present.

The inside of the base was dark, dank, and quiet. Tony could hear the echo of water dripping down the corridor, and the distant whistle of the wind from the second floor. It _felt_ empty, but somehow malicious, the air holding a certain quality of hostility that made Tony’s neck prickle. They encountered no one as they made swift progress through the base. It was simply designed, not a labyrinthine tangle of corridors that would have been more useful during an attack, which lead Tony to believe that it wasn’t always a secret base for some militant organization or other.

Steve stopped at a set of double doors and looked briefly to Clint, and then to Tony. Nodding, Tony shifted his stance to put himself between the doors and Bruce. Steve’s eyes flickered between them and then he turned back to the doors. Behind him, Bruce snorted and poked Tony in the side. Tony elbowed him back to say _deal with it_. Steve and Clint shoved the doors open in tandem and rushed through, Tony following behind with the muzzle of his Webley pointed just a few degrees up from the floor.

The room beyond was just as empty and dark as the rest of the complex, rusted metal walls, metal tables, a stool with a cracked red vinyl seat. Next to the stool was something that looked unnervingly like an electric chair. Tony holstered the Webley and directed his torch at the chair.

“Well this looks fun,” he sing-songed. Bruce joined him at the chair, crouching on the other side to look underneath the seat. “What’s the undercarriage look like, Bruceybear?”

“It’s been filed and burned,” Bruce reported, reaching up to steady himself with the arm of the chair as he dropped to his knees and twisted further underneath. “Uh, wait…” He let go of the chair and shuffled closer. “There’s a partial etching here… it was definitely enchanted.”

“Augmented,” Tony corrected automatically.

Bruce ignored him. “I can only see a single point and part of an arc. Could have been anything.” He scooted back and stood, brushing his palms off on his thighs. He shined his light on the back of the chair while Tony examined the seat and the arms. “Filed and scorched here too. Anything on your end?”

“Nothing.” Tony straightened up to look at the canopy, but it was equally well filed and burnt. He couldn’t make out any of the constructs, or guess at what they could have been intended to do.

“Not hooked up to any source of electricity,” Bruce provided, “And it doesn’t look like it has any mechanism available to attach it to an energy source. Whatever the chair did, it did it on paraetheric energy alone.”

“You labheads have any ideas?” Clint asked, joining them at the chair. “The rest of the room is clean. Well, not _clean_ , obviously, but clear.”

Bruce folded his arms over his chest, his torchlight beam flickering off to a corner. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t look like it did anything fun, but we can’t tell what its purpose was. All of the spells –”

“– Constructs –”

“– Have been filed off and then it looks like the chair was scorched to hide any residual energy.” Bruce shrugged. “Could have been anything from dream induction to static torture.”

“Probably not a virtual vacation machine,” Tony agreed. He looked around the room, flashing his light over the tables and chairs. “And I think not an execution chair.”

“What makes you say that?” Steve asked, frowning down at the chair. “Looks a lot like the chair at the prison for ma-… construct engineers.”

Tony grinned, pleased. “It does, but look around. This isn’t an execution chamber. Even paraetheric execution chairs are not pleasant for witnesses. The smell alone is enough to curl most people’s hair. This is set up for observation.” Tony pointed out the tables with his light. “There could have been twenty… maybe thirty people here, and all set up to observe.”

“And you don’t think there are people who would want to observe that?” Clint asked quietly.

“I’m sure there are,” Tony admitted, “But I think it would be more likely that if they’re going to observe an execution with this kind of organization, they’re going to do it behind glass, up high so they have a better view. This isn’t the setup of some sick fucks getting their jollies off on watching someone die, this is scientific observation. Admittedly not always mutually exclusive, but…”

Steve shook his head, but he didn’t disagree. He ran his hand through his hair and turned back to the door. “If there’s nothing we can figure out here, let’s move on.”

Something about the chair nagged at Tony, pulled at his teeth, made the skin between his shoulder blades itch, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. The chair was welded to the floor, the ring hanging above it ready to disintegrate at the first touch.  “Can we take it with us?” he asked Bruce.

Bruce’s lips pursed into a tiny bud and then moved side-to-side. “We could,” he said finally, “But I can’t imagine what else we’re going to find. It’s torched, Tony.”

Letting out a sigh, Tony nodded. “Alright, let’s go.”

Steve led them back out of the room and down the hall, opening and clearing rooms as they went. The remaining rooms were small and poorly furnished, and several looked more likely to be storage closets except that there were too many of them, lined up next to each other one-after-the-other, twelve of them, small and dark, and not something he was thinking about. The whole complex made him feel an itchy sense of dread every time they rounded a corner.

“It shouldn’t be this empty,” Steve said quietly when they stopped at the top of a flight of stairs to crouch by the wall. “Those sentries were unmanned. There should have been a puppeteer here at least.”

“Controller,” Clint corrected distractedly. “We call them controllers now.”

Steve made a noise halfway between acknowledgement and dismissal. “Controller,” he corrected, “At least one, right?”

Tony shrugged. He’d been just a bit preoccupied immediately after the battle, and hadn’t examined any of the sentry constructs. “They could have been built as automatic defenses,” he said, “Especially if they managed to get their hands on my autonavigation constructs. They wouldn’t have been as advanced as what I have on the ship, but even one from five years ago would have been enough to give those little bastards some measure of autonomy.”

“Think it’s an abandoned base?” Steve asked, frowning, “But why leave them here at all? What are they protecting?”

“They could have forgotten them when they left,” Bruce suggested, “It wouldn’t be the first time a military organization cleared out of an area and left the defenses on. There are still landmines buried all across Europe from the Great War.”

“Seems wrong,” Steve said, and Tony thought he sounded peeved about it. Tony almost laughed at his tone, but it wasn’t funny. Children were the most likely victims of abandoned landmines, and that particular construct technology was brand new, and unstable at best during the Great War. The mines often went off without even being triggered, just jumped out of the ground and sprayed rusted shrapnel in a ten yard radius. SI had several teams out searching for and disarming the mines, but there were thousands of them, well hidden all across the continent.

“Well, there’s only one more door that could be hiding anyone, so I guess we’re about to find out,” Clint said, cutting into the conversation. He was in professional mode and wouldn’t be a lot of fun until the base was clear. Once he was sure the threat was neutralized, he’d probably be trying to rig a sentry construct to function like a flying surf board. Tony thought about the mechanics of that and made a mental note to snag one of them for them a few experiments. Clint always made a willing Guinea pig for

Tony watched Clint’s and Steve’s hands fly in the complicated language of SHIELD hand signs that they all still pretended Tony didn’t understand, that he hadn’t figured out within two forays into battle with Natasha and Clint. Tony stood without being told, hauling Bruce up with him, and they all flowed around the corner and rushed the door at the end of the corridor, crashing into the wall to stay out of a potential shooter’s line of sight.

No sounds came from beyond the door, just the distant _drip-drip-plop_ of a leak around the corner and down the stairs. Clint tapped the back of his hand on the door to feel for heat, and then gave Tony a questioningly look. Tony reached across Steve’s body and set just his fingertips on the metal, felt for any residual construct energy, and shook his head. Clint jiggled the doorknob, and then slung his bow over his shoulder so he could pull out his lockpicks. He had the door open almost faster than he could have done it with a key, and pushed it in. The hinges squealed loudly with neglect and Steve shot into the room with his shield up.

“Clear,” he called a second later.

They all visibly relaxed as they followed him inside, Clint settling himself casually by the door. The room was insulated and lined in wood planks, decked out with an actual mattress on the bed, a lamp, and a desk. The other rooms they’d encountered weren’t readily distinguishable from cells, and Tony still wasn’t convinced that they weren’t. This must have been the head honcho’s room, and dry enough to be dusty and festooned with spider webs. Judging from the thick coating of dust and the musty smell, no one had set foot in the room for years.

“I guess it has been abandoned,” Steve said uneasily, flipping a book on the bedside table open. “ _Buddenbrooks_ ,” he read with a remarkably spot-on accent. “Thomas Mann.”

“Little light before-bed reading,” Bruce murmured, leaning around Steve to look at it more closely. He opened up a random page. “Not a translation,” he observed.

Tony hummed slightly and started riffling through desk drawers while Steve and Bruce opened up the wardrobe and the footlocker. The desk was filled with personal letters, a few mementos, a dusty photograph of a willowy, pale-haired woman with a chubby baby on her lap, and, hidden in a false compartment, a string of rosary beads. Tony lifted the beads out and let them fall through his fingers in a familiar pattern as he opened the middle drawer. He pulled out a dry ink pad, and at the very back of the drawer, a heavy pewter-handled stamp. Hovering carefully over an undisturbed corner of the desk, he pressed the stamp into the dust and cast his torchlight on the resulting imprint.

“Well, hello, hello.” Tony whistled to get Steve’s attention and handed the stamp over. Steve peered over his shoulder and made a low, rumbly sound in his chest that made Tony shiver.

“Hydra,” he growled.

“Surprise,” Tony responded weakly.  

~*~

They hauled every document they could scavenge back to _The Iron Avenger_ , and destroyed what they couldn’t move or couldn’t use. Only the officer’s room was salvageable, most of the rest ruined by water and neglect. Tony set a fire spell in the officer’s stripped room, and then tied it in to his wards so it wouldn’t spread past the facility.

Steve watched him work with a profound sense of awe. He’d never had much of a sense for magic, and despite all his best efforts – and his mother’s scolding – it was his worst subject in school, but he could feel Tony working. It was a tickle at the back of his neck that sent shivers down his spine, the memory of closing his teeth on the very faintest pale outline of a tattoo beneath Tony’s skin and feeling him come to life with the shock of it.

“Better be on the other side of the door when I lite this, Cap,” Tony suggested, still not looking at him.

Steve obligingly gave Tony his space and followed Clint out the door. The gig waited for them on the ground with Dr. Banner as unassuming guard. He still wasn’t sure he believed the SHIELD reports that Bruce held a monster under his skin, but he seemed confident in his abilities to handle anything that might come after him without so much as a knife to defend himself. In Steve’s experience, men with that kind of quiet confidence were more dangerous than the ones who painted themselves as expert killers.

“Still looking good up there?” Steve asked Natasha just for something to fill in the gap of Tony’s silence. He’d never been out with them when they were ‘on mission’ so maybe Tony was always quiet on the ground, but Steve had an unsettling feeling that it was unusual behavior.

“Oh, I forgot to mention the army of dragons I’m fighting off right now,” Natasha responded dryly.

“Get me the teeth, Nat!” Clint demanded, grabbing Steve by the shoulder and leaning over to speak directly into the communications mirror Tony had clipped to his vest. “Last time you didn’t save me the teeth and I want a necklace.”

“I’m not getting you dragon teeth, Clint.”

“Necklace, Nat. Necklace.”

“Make a necklace out of shark’s teeth like a normal person,” Natasha suggested. Clint’s expression turned immediately from playful to honest consideration. The look reminded him so strongly of Dum Dum that it sucked the breath right out of his lungs.

“Do’n even think abou’ it, darlin’,” Steve said before he could catch himself, his native accent thickening his words, the old Gaelic endearment tripping off his tongue before he could remember that ‘darling’ wasn’t a word that men casually used amongst themselves any longer.

Clint gave him a saucy look, apparently not minding the endearment. “What could you possibly mean?” he asked innocently.

Steve cleared his throat. “You are not going shark hunting for trophies.”

“What are we not doing for trophies?” Tony asked as he hopped into the gig. He glanced sideways at Clint and then ran a fingernail down his forearm. The tattoos on his arms flared brightly. From beyond the closed metal door, Steve barely heard a concussive _fwoom_. He doubted anyone else would have heard it at all.

“Momma Cap isn’t going to let me go shark hunting,” Clint explained. He gave Tony a wicked smile and then pouted, “Can’t I, dad?”

Without missing a beat, Tony said, “Listen to your mother.” He massaged his thumb over his wrist and his tattoos sank back into his skin. Steve wanted to reach over and take his hand, press against his skin until the tattoos came back to the surface. He wanted to know if they were as warm as they looked. Steve looked away from his exposed skin and belted himself into the gig as Clint took them back up.

~*~

That night, Steve hovered in the corridor at the junction that would lead to either his own small cabin, or Tony’s quarters. Next to him with his nose buried in a file brought back from the Hydra base, Tony continued walking for several steps, and then stopped. He looked over his shoulder. “Coming?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Steve couldn’t get a read on him. His expression was closed, but Steve couldn’t decide if he was hopeful or cautious. “Do you want me to?” he asked finally, watching Tony’s face carefully. Tony’s eyes flickered away from him, and then back. He tugged his lips into a terrible impression of a smile and jerked his head toward his cabin. He started moving again without waiting to see if Steve was going to follow.

Glancing once more toward his own cabin, Steve trailed after him and slipped through the partially open door. “Tony, I-”

Tony cut him off with a rough kiss, and Steve leaned into it because he was starved for contact, and he was selfish and he _wanted it._ He could already see the pattern forming, that Tony handled personal interaction in one of three ways – confrontation, sarcasm, and this, using his tongue and his fingers like weapons, still confrontation. Steve let his breath out on Tony’s tongue and dropped the idea of discussing the strange intensity of their earlier tryst. Tony pulled him through the cabin, and Steve followed him to the bunk, thrilled they were at least making it to a bed, and might even be entirely naked at some point.

They lay in a tangle of blankets and a mist of sweat at the end, Steve’s body shaking with aftershocks and singing everywhere their skin touched. He ran his fingers lazily over Tony’s arm, taking slow breaths and relishing the contact.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked when his heartbeat finally calmed and he became aware of Tony’s stillness.

“Depends on if you’re going to talk all night or not,” Tony muttered in reply, but he did so around a mouthful of Steve’s fingers, his tongue weaving naughty circles around Steve’s forefinger, pressing at the webbing, sucking hard on the ends. He looked up at Steve through his lashes, as though daring him to take his hand away.

Accepting the challenge with a smile, Steve tucked his opposite hand under his head and watched him. He had a talented mouth, and he was shameless with it, his eyes never leaving Steve’s like it was some kind of contest. If it was one, Steve lost, eyes finally drifting closed under the heady pleasure of it, and Tony rewarded his failure by letting his fingers go and dragging his talented tongue over Steve’s ribs and across his nipple instead. Steve laughed, jerking away in ticklish sensitivity, rubbing roughly over the nipple to clear the tingles.

“You’re a pretty amazing lay, Captain,” Tony purred.

“I think you can call me Steve in bed.” Steve lifted his arm and curled it around Tony’s shoulders once more. “And thank you.”

“I think I’ll call you Captain,” Tony said after a moment’s consideration. “That way every time I say it out of bed, you’ll remember this.” He nipped a mark into Steve’s side that healed almost before it formed. “Fascinating, the way you heal.”

Steve recognized the look – he shared it with his many times Great Grandfather Anthony. “You’re not cutting me open.”

Tony lifted both hands as much as he could while lying on his stomach, silently professing innocence. He walked his fingers down Steve’s chest, keen eyes following every detail of his skin, every mark. “It’s strange that you still have freckles,” he said vaguely, “I thought ‘the potion’ made you perfect.”

“Anthony said that the imperfections made me human, that if I’d been made ‘perfect,’ there wouldn’t have been anything left in me of, well… me.” Steve shrugged. Anthony was a professed Protestant, but his beliefs surrounding the soul and the connection of the soul to the body were decidedly pagan. Steve had never called him on it, and it was probably why Anthony had felt so comfortable sharing. Steve felt a deep pang of homesickness then, remembering sitting between Anthony and Peggy at the fireside with his Commandos kicking up a cheerful ruckus a few yards away. He banished the thought, touched with a niggling sense of unease that he was in bed with his friend’s descendant. He gave Tony a tight smile, not missing the fact that Tony made no effort to ask after his grandfather.

They fell into silence, Steve’s hand moving in thoughtless patterns on Tony’s back. After several comfortable minutes, he turned to ask again if he should leave, but found Tony fast asleep on his shoulder. Sleep softened the lines of his face, and made Steve realize that he was younger than his original estimate. Steve shifted just enough to make sure Tony would be comfortable through the night and fell into an easy doze.

~*~

Steve sat at a tiny café table with Clint and Natasha across from him. Natasha was dressed in a gray wool suit with bold green accents, and little heeled shoes that laced in the front. She wore a felt hat that fell over the right side of her face, the deep emerald color setting off the flame of her hair in a way that had already gained them more than a few looks.

“I thought we were going for inconspicuous,” Steve said, looking casually across the street to the German embassy and taking a sip out of the tiny cup of coffee. It looked like a child’s plaything in his giant hands and he was forced to hold it with two fingers. His pinky finger stuck out on its own for a lack of anywhere else to rest, and Clint kept snickering at him.

“You are going for inconspicuous,” Natasha said, her petal pink lips stretched into an amused smile as Steve kicked Clint under the table. “I’m going for distracting.” Her keen gaze focused in on some cue across the street and she pulled a compact out of her clutch and patted a cotton puff over her nose and forehead. “Time to go, Clint.”

“I’m not staying out here,” Steve said, shifting in the wrought iron chair to stand. Natasha got to her feet first and put a hand on his shoulder to keep him seated. She picked up a large tote and set it on the table next to him. A box of Mongol watercolor pencils slid out. Steve lifted the top of the bag to see his sketchpad underneath. He looked up at her, lips pulling into a tight line.

“Don’t have a fit,” Natasha said, pushing a curl off her shoulder, “It just looks like your book. Hang out, play the art student, draw people walking out of the embassy. Be as inconspicuous as possible.” She patted his shoulder once more, grabbed Clint by the elbow, and cuddled against him as they started walking.

“Enjoy your coffee,” Clint called back over his shoulder. Steve gave him a rude hand sign in reply and Clint laughed as he turned back around.

Steve relaxed into his chair and tried to imagine that he really was just an art student, that he belonged in this era of men with short hair and ladies in short skirts, and his best friend was just at work for the afternoon. He and Bucky would meet up in the evening and go dancing, drink with a few girls, and get ready for a war. It almost worked as he sat there with his doll-sized cup of coffee and a book of wonderfully creamy pages, making quick sketches of the people who walked by, paying special, though casual attention to the ones who stepped out of the German embassy across the street. He marked each of those with a scribble just beneath their feet, and then moved on before anyone could catch him staring. He drew a lady in a charcoal gray coat walking three fancy dogs on pink leashes, a mother with a bassinet and two older children walking beside her, a delivery truck filled to bursting with produce, and finally a shiny luxury car all in black and chrome, with a blue stripe down the side that glowed with magic. One girl sat on another girl’s lap in the passenger seat, both topless and howling in laughter as the car whipped down street. The pair of young women at the table behind him let out scandalized giggles, and the trio of older women in their big hats gasped.

Steve caught the one girl’s flowing hair in a sweep of brown pencil, capturing the twist of her body with a pair of fast curves. The girls blew him kisses as they passed and Steve couldn’t help briefly lifting his pencil in acknowledgement.

“Your hair is almost as long as theirs,” Natasha commented, dropping into a seat. Steve jumped and looked guiltily back at the embassy building. “You didn’t miss me walking out. I exited the back,” she said, planting her elbows on the table to look at his sketches. She found the scribble marking the embassy sketches in less than a minute, her lacquered nails tapping over them. He’d done his best to capture what details he could manage in the few seconds they were in line of sight – a woman’s pink coat, a man’s pinstriped suit, hair color, shoes – but he wasn’t sure what Natasha expected to get out of them.

“Here he is,” she said, tapping the image of a man with thin hair combed over from the left, a small mustache, big ears, and drooping eyes. He’d walked out with a younger man in a gray suit, but they parted ways at the bottom of the stairs after a brief conversation that meant they were more detailed than most of the others. “This is the Count and his aide. Clint is in his office right now.”

“Why aren’t you in there with him?”

She flicked her head, and the motion rolled down her shoulders. “My job was just getting him out of the office and making sure he’s going to Stark’s party tonight.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her shapely legs, examining him from beneath the brim of her hat.

“Those girls were cute,” she said so casually that it immediately sharpened Steve’s attention.

“Yes, they were. And very naked. I don’t get the idea that’s common, even today.”

Natasha shrugged again. “Depends on where you go, I guess.”

Steve continued drawing just for an excuse not to look at her. She watched him with her sharp eyes, and his skin tingled wherever her gaze traveled. Steve sketched a carriage pulling itself, the side glowing with a spell in a geometric pattern of triangles and circles. It should have looked out of place among the sleeker automobiles, but it wasn’t alone on the road. Three other horseless carriages clattered down the street next to all the chrome, rubber tires, and glass windows.

“So you and Stark, huh?” Natasha asked after a long pause for consideration.

“Guess so,” Steve answered noncommittally.

“You’ve got a hard road ahead of you with him.”

Steve’s jaw tightened, but he made himself take a breath and smile before he turned to answer, “I’m pretty used to those by now. Feels like home.”

~*~

They sat for another twenty minutes, Natasha ordering them both more tiny coffees and plates of little cakes to match. Steve popped a whole cake into his mouth and nearly spit it back out. The sugar hit the back of his mouth like a wrecking ball. He swallowed and licked at the roof of his mouth to clear the sticky sweetness. Natasha laughed at his expression as he swallowed his coffee to balance out the sugar.

“I can’t really get used to the sugar,” he admitted. “I never had anything quite like this growing up. We had sweets, but they were rare and this is…” Steve gave the fluffy pink frosting a suspicious look.

Natasha nudged the plate around so tan and black cake with a thin layer of pale frosting was facing him. “Try that one. It’s not as sweet. Tiramisu.”

Steve shook at his head dubiously and turned his attention back to his assigned task. He sketched a slender man in an unassuming blue suit with blond hair below a shallow brimmed hat. Natasha grabbed a purple pencil out of the pack, and started scribbling on the drawing, filling in the white vest with a deep violet. Steve gave her a surprised look, but then returned his attention to the man walking briskly down the stairs, only to realize that it was Clint.

“He’s pretty good at blending in,” Natasha consoled. She drew thick lines over his pants to make them tighter, drawing a vest over the lines of the jacket. She added a purple cape to his suit, and then drew an ‘H’ on his hat.

“H?”

“Hawkeye,” Clint provided as he took the seat next to Natasha. “Kind of a nickname.” He grabbed the sketchbook and turned it so he could see the sketch. “You’re not allowed to design my clothing,” he told Natasha, flipping through the other pages. He caught the same scribble and examined each of the embassy sketches just like Natasha had.

“Not very good at clandestine sketching,” Steve guessed, shaking his head. He’d thought it clever at the time, but they’d both caught on in seconds.

“It was a great idea,” Natasha said, “This is just what we’re trained for.”

Steve tipped his head and watched Clint’s eyes flicking over the page. “How did you two end up with Tony? Seems like a strange place for a pair of agents.” He glanced around to make sure no one was paying close attention to their conversation, but he wasn’t too worried if the other two weren’t.

Clint’s lips went tight, and Natasha gave him a sideways look. “Just worked out that way.” Her eyes moved consideringly to Steve and she added, “Started as undercover, but my cover was blown and Stark kept me on.”

“He kept you after he found out that you were spying on him?” Steve asked, startled. He didn’t know Tony as well as he would like, but he didn’t see betrayal being something he would be okay with from anyone.

“He knew I was spy from the minute I walked in his doors. I knew he knew it – it was like a game. And then the game got real.” She smiled. “I’m a useful girl to have around, and I know useful people.”

Clint didn’t add anything, so Steve let it go, but he knew Coulson used to be their handler and Steve was curious why he wasn’t any longer. Grant told him the story originally, but no one knew why Phil gave up his pair of crack agents in exchange for taking on a team of self-labeled misfits. From the look on Clint’s face, it wasn’t anything happy.

Natasha let the silence sit for a second and then turned to Clint. “Anything?”

“Surprise, surprise, he doesn’t keep any Hydra letterheads in his desk. Some personal correspondence, few dirty pictures…found that same book from the base, no writing in it, looks like a different edition. The only thing even remotely sea-creature related was a map with a sea monster in the Atlantic. Nothing above the cabinets but dust, nothing in the vents. Hopefully we can more out of him tonight.”

“Or we’re going house snooping tomorrow,” Natasha said in agreement.

~*~

He’d thought of himself as _Jarvis_ for so long that his first name felt strange to him. No one had regularly called him _Edwin_ since his wife had died more than two decades before, and so much of his life revolved around one irresponsible, reckless billionaire and his crusades that he’d long since lost his grasp on Edwin.

“Miss Potts,” he tried again, keeping his voice gentle and soft. It was a trick he’d learned with Tony as the best way to curb overenthusiastic thrill seekers. “This is very dangerous, and I don’t want to see you come to any harm.”

Pepper gave him a sweet smile. Her smile changed the shape of her face entirely, lightened her eyes, and gave her an aspect of pure innocence that hid a certain ruthlessness. As someone who’d been forced to adopt ruthlessness on behalf of a Stark, Jarvis understood.

“Sir asked me to keep you safe,” Jarvis tried without much hope of success.

She reached out and touched his arm with her tiny hand, squeezing him firmly. “You know he asked me to do the same thing for you.”

“All the more reason that we should not be doing this.” Jarvis covered her hand with his and tried to beam sense into her with his eyes alone.

“You’ve been asked to protect me,” Pepper pointed out, “And I’ve been asked to protect you. So the best way we can do that, is by being here together.”

It was exactly the sort of thing that Tony would say, and it made Jarvis miss the brat. He’d always thought of Tony like a son, and God knew the boy could use some love to balance out the inadequacies of Howard as a father. Jarvis loved his old friend, but most days he hated him too. He looked at Pepper’s smiling face and felt another pang of wistfulness that his two reckless children would just settle down with each other.

“That does not make any sense, Miss Potts.”

Pepper gave him a victorious look. “It makes a Tony kind of sense.”

Jarvis sighed. “That is very much what I mean, Miss Potts.”

Pepper pulled her hand out from under his and patted him on the arm. “So glad you agree.” Without waiting for any further arguments, she stood up, much shorter in her flat boots than he was used to, and crept around the crate. Letting out a breath, Jarvis followed in a crouch.

The warehouse was not deserted, but big enough that they could avoid the three guards wandering the floor at a leisurely pace. Jarvis followed Pepper down a corridor of crates and into a section under a broken light. She rose onto her toes to peek over the top of the crates and then took a crowbar out of her bag.

“Miss Potts –” Jarvis tried again, but she was fearless, reckless. She wedged the crowbar into the top of one of the smaller crates and pried the top open with a squeal of nails. Jarvis winced and pulled his handgun. It wasn’t the trusty Stark 09 that he’d carried for years before Tony shut down weapons production, but a Colt that Tony had augmented for him.

“Shhh,” Pepper hissed, as if he were the one making too much noise. She pushed the packaging away and dug into the box, pulling out a metal tin of .22 bullets. She tossed a glance at Jarvis and set it aside to open another of the crates. Jarvis frowned at the box, reaching over to trace his finger over the _Stark Industries_ label on the top. It was possible that it was old stock, but it shouldn’t still be in a Stark facility.

The next box held construct tubes. She pulled one out and shuffled around until she could read it, brushing dust off with her nicely manicured fingers. She peered at in the darkness and then broke the seal and carefully drew out a sheet of heavy velum. The light was too poor for Jarvis to read her expression, but he could tell by the sudden tension in her shoulders that she was _angry_.

“Miss Potts, we need to put these back and try to reseal the boxes,” Jarvis said gently, taking the construct away.

“The seal is already broken. I’m taking it with us,” Pepper said stubbornly, snatching it back and stuffing the tube in her bag. She opened the box of .22 bullets and pulled one out, twisting it around to examine it more closely. Clenching the bullet in her palm, she reached into her pocket and replaced it with one of her own bullets. Jarvis took it back out of the box and pulled out a white handkerchief stitched with a neutralizing construct. He quickly wiped the bullet down and put it back before cleaning off the box.

“And you just _happened_ to be carrying that around?” Pepper teased quietly, peering around the boxes. “Shh, one of the guards.” She eased back around the crates and crouched next to him as the guard’s boots sounded on the concrete floor.

“Didya hear somethin’ ov’a here?” the guard called to his comrades. He had a thick Brooklyn accent, blunted by a slight lisp. “Squeakin’ or somethin’?”

“Rats, Markie. It’s a warehouse. Whatdya think?” a smaller voice replied, muffled through a badly done communication mirror. Jarvis winced at the sound of it and imagined how Tony would have ranted over it.  He would have sketched a better communications construct in the dust just to taunt them, and Jarvis would have cleaned it up on the way out the door.

“Tony would be grinding his teeth,” Pepper said once the guard turned and ambled away. She replaced the box of bullets and tried to push the box closed.

“You’re not going to manage that without a mallet,” Jarvis said pushing her hands away. He pried out the nails propping the box open as quietly as he could, and then turned the box around so the opening wasn’t immediately visible. “This is a very bad idea,” he repeated again just for posterities sake. “They _will_ notice.”

“Not until after we’re gone,” Pepper said without a hint of concern. She checked around the boxes and then crept out on all fours to check down the corridor. “Let’s go!” She reached back and waved him forward and then slid into the walkway. Jarvis followed, moving swiftly behind her. She checked her shoulder into a crate as they rushed past and Jarvis reached out with the instincts born of raising a child to catch it, but it had spun past its center of gravity, and it hit the floor before he could steady it.

“Run!”

Wide-eyed, Pepper took off at a sprint as sounds of alarm rose behind them. A shot went wide and clanged against the metal handrail just to Jarvis left, setting up a spray of hot metal that Jarvis felt on his hands. He hissed and put his hands on Pepper’s waist to get her up the stairs and out of the way as more shots rang out, the guards shouting after them. They slammed out of the door and Pepper hit the ground in a sprint. All around them, the complex came to life, lights washing the lot in a glare of white, men running out of outbuilding.

“These aren’t Stark men!” Pepper called as they ran, ducking out of pools of light and through a line of cargo containers stacked at the edge of the property. A man in dark combat clothing burst out from between two containers with an assault rifle against his shoulder. Pepper didn’t even hesitate, just swung her bag and knocked the man across the face. Startled, the guard stumbled into the container, and Jarvis took his gun arm, slammed a fist into his throat, and flipped him to the ground.

Pepper stared at him. Jarvis straightened his shirt with a practiced twist and looked back at her. “Do you really think I’ve lived with Anthony Stark for thirty-nine years without learning how to throw a punch, Miss Potts?”

She opened her mouth to respond, but they heard the thunder of approaching feet on the gravel and took off again. Pepper hit the chain link fence, and Jarvis reached down to grab her ankles. He shoved her up the fence and the scrambled over the top while he jumped up to join her. He wasn’t as spry as he once was and he slipped twice before he made it to the top, bullets hitting the ground behind him and pinging off the fence. He dropped to the other side and they took off running again. Jarvis regretted parking the aircar so far away as they heard automobiles revving up.

“This way!” Pepper called, catching his wrist and dragging him down a side ally. She ran to the end of the ally and caught a ladder.

“Miss Potts, what –?”

“Come _on_!” Pepper hissed, not looking back at him. Jarvis followed quickly. They ended up on a roof three buildings away from where he parked the car, and Pepper just started running again. Jarvis realized that the roofs were connected and ran after her, jumping the small gap from one building to the next, and once more. The aircar was where they left it, partially sheltered against a ventilation unit.

“Let’s hope they don’t have air support,” Pepper said as they jumped into the vehicle.

“Wait.” Jarvis put a hand on her arm to still her. He hesitated and then got back out with the dust cloth, quickly throwing it over the car and crawling back under.

“What are you doing?” Pepper demanded.

“Hush,” Jarvis said, dropping his seatback down and just listening. High above, he heard the distinctive whine of an airship, and pointed at the roof of the car.

Pepper pursed her lips unhappily. “So we just sit here?”

“They are going to expect us to flee,” Jarvis explained, “And unless they suspect that it is someone with access to an aircar – unlikely for the average sneak thief – they are going to expect us to run on the ground. We just need to wait until it quiets down, and then we can leave.” He looked over to her. “What did you find?”

Pepper twisted in the seat to pull out her bag. She rustled through it, pushing aside the crowbar and a gun to get to the construct tube. She handed it over with a tense look. “It’s a communications construct,” she explained unhappily. “One of Tony’s newest.” She turned and stared at the window. “It isn’t even in production yet.”

Jarvis sighed. “So it is someone high in the organization.”

“Someone on the executive board, or in R&D,” she agreed, her lips tight and tone tense. “At least we’ve narrowed the list.”

~*~

The constructs over the door had deteriorated since the last time Tony visited the Carbonell home in Paris. It was his mother’s childhood home, and though he’d inherited it from her when she died, he’d never been able to bring himself to stay in the house more than a few days at a time after those first few devastating months.

“Is this really a priority?” Rhodey asked, holding onto his ladder as Tony set his chisel to the façade and gently tapped in the lines that had eroded over the last year and a half. Tony blew into the grooves and rubbed his finger across it. He wasn’t an artist, but he was proud of the construct, the best attempt he’d ever made at disguising a construct to meet a Parisian esthetic. His mother would have been horrified if he’d just covered her house in his usual geometry, so he designed the constructs in curlicues and loops.

“Tony!”

“Jarvis and Pepper took care of the details, the staff are cooking up a storm, and Cook already threatened to chop my fingers off if I step foot in the kitchen again. I _need_ my fingers, Rhodey, they’re important.” Tony leaned over, making the ladder rattle. Rhodey cursed under his breath and adjusted his grip.

“You don’t think your time and energy could be better spent getting ready for tonight?” Rhodey prompted.

“I am,” Tony said, stuffing the chisel in his mouth and using a fine stylus to link a pair of curling lines. He stuck the stylus behind his ear and took the chisel out. “It’s part of the wards.” He looked over his shoulder down at Rhodey, grinning at the confused expression on his face. It was Rhodey’s first visit to the Carbonell house and he’d been following Tony around with a concerned look on his face all morning.

“Mom would have killed me,” Tony explained, turning back to the construct, “If I’d put a bunch of geometry all over the house and ruined the look.” He chipped out the last line and invested it to activate the wards. He closed his eyes and set his hand on the sun warmed wall. The wards opened up for him, outlining the house in glowing blue lines, the most elegant protections he’d ever designed. It took him over six straight months of obsessive work after his parent’s death, but he’d found it hard to go back since.

He pulled his hand away and shook his head. “All done, looking like a beautiful old lady.” He dropped his tools into Rhodey’s waiting hands and climbed down, jumping the last several steps.

“How many times do I have tell you not to call me that?” Rhodey teased, folding the ladder up and following him into the house. They dodged around a bustling army of maids and caterers cleaning up the house and preparing it for the soiree. They were all in a frenzy, and Tony almost felt bad for them – he’d given them less than a week to prepare for a _party of the year_ event in a house that had been closed up for more than a year. Almost, because it was a happy kind of activity with music blaring through the halls and caterers delivering three magnificent meals a day to the workers, along with a constant stream of snacks and cold drinks.

Tony swiped a plate of finger sandwiches as they walked, happily munching on a cucumber sandwich, which was still not like Jarvis used to make, but close enough to make him homesick.

“Do you have any idea how we’re going to get this man to talk?” Rhodey asked. Tony turned around and walked backwards, stuffing more sandwiches in his mouth. “Do you think you’re just going to ask him politely over dri-” Tony pushed a sandwich into his open mouth and winked as Rhodey took it back out and gave him a disapproving look.

“Lighten up, huggybear. Eat some sandwiches, have some chilled fruit juice, go chat up some maids. I’ve got this!”

He left Rhodey staring after him as he took off up a staircase, twisting to the side to let a pretty young girl with an armful of linens pass him. Sticking the sandwich in his teeth to free up his hands, he pointed to her with one hand, and mouthed, _single_. Rhodey smiled politely at the girl, and then glared up at Tony and rolled his eyes. Tony shrugged and jogged the rest of the way up the stairs.

Humming, Tony ducked a pair of caterers and skirted around a florist to get to his upstairs lab. “Big Green! How do you like the toys?”

“You keep this place well stocked for somewhere you barely step foot into,” Bruce said, looking up from a wax tablet, his stylus hovering over the design. “I’ve been going through the documents we retrieved from the base. I think some of those letters we thought were personal correspondence might have actually been coded exchanges, but my German is pretty rusty, and I’ve never been much of a code breaker.”

He held out a page. Tony took it and looked it over, flipping it look at the back. He didn’t sense any paraetheric energy clinging to the page, and it was written on plain paper with a typewriter. “Show Steve.”

Bruce blinked at him. “Steve?”

“Sure. Sounded like he good tongue for German, and he’s got the kind of mind that would work with codebreaking.” Tony shrugged. “Natasha speaks German too, but the language itself might not help.” He dropped the page to the desk and wandered around the lab, eating sandwiches and poking at old projects.

“Are you okay, Tony?” Bruce asked after a long break of silence.

Tony glanced up and set down the globe he’d been fiddling with. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Bruce shrugged. “Captain America comes on board, a few days later…”

“It’s just sex, Bruce. It’s not like I’ve never brought someone on board and banged them in my cabin.” Tony set his plate down and stuck another sandwich in his mouth. He nudged it toward Bruce, who took one absently. Putting food in his path was the best way to trick him in to eating, and Tony left the plate alone so Bruce would finish it.

“Just be careful, Tony. We _are_ out looking for his best friend. You know there are some historians who put forward the theory that James Barnes was more than just his friend.”

Tony sat down at one of his new sentries and picked up a probe. He flicked the canvas covering off and poked at an open panel. “So what?”

“So… just be careful.” Bruce turned back to his tablet, clearly at the limit for uncomfortable personal interaction for the day.

Tony turned his attention to the sentry, gently pulling up a panel and peering inside. The sentry was nothing like the clunky Hydra drones, but a fully articulated cherubim carrying a bow and arrow and a bright purple ‘H’ on the forehead, designed mostly for Natasha’s amusement. Unbidden, he remembered the look on Steve’s face in the construct mirror, and the tone of his voice while he talked about Bucky.

He didn’t get much further than that strangely gut-twisting pair of images before the workshop door opened to let Steve in with Natasha and Clint on his heels. Tony casually flicked the canvas covering over his sentry’s face and looked up at them in greeting.

“Find anything incriminating, oh super spies?”

“Just some nuddie pics,” Clint replied with a jaunty smile.

Tony feigned offense. “And you didn’t bring them back for me? I’m hurt.”

Clint slid around the table and leaned close to Tony’s side, reaching out to grab one of the exposed toes of the sentry. Tony popped his fingers without bothering to look at him, concentrating on the construct he was burning into the side panel. Clint subsided, slouching against the table to watch him work. Over on the couch, Natasha and Steve put their heads together with a sketchpad in between them, Natasha scribbling in it with a purple pencil and pushing Steve’s hands out of the way when he tried to take it back from her.

“Can you two look at these, please?” Bruce asked, breaking abruptly into their conversation. Steve jolted, startled by the suddenness of his voice when he hadn’t even acknowledged them walking in, but Natasha didn’t even look up from her coloring, used to Bruce’s wandering attention when he was working.

“What is it?” she asked, pushing at Steve’s cheek when he tried to get under her with a blue pencil.

“I think these personal letters might actually be encoded…” Bruce trailed off as he fumbled around his workspace looking for the misplaced letters.

“Under the sandwich plate, buddy,” Tony directed. His eyes kept darting over to Steve and Natasha on the couch, and how perfectly she fit against Steve’s side, and it was adorable, and maddening, and it made his legs feel restless.

Natasha finally abandoned the sketchbook and stood up to investigate, Steve immediately setting to it with the blue pencil in her absence.

“They’re designing me a costume,” Clint said in a conversational tone, seeing Tony’s interest.

“What do you need a costume for?” he asked. “Like a masquerade costume? Halloween?”

“Apparently my alter ego is going to be a superhero in a Captain America Approves This Comic run.” Clint rolled his eyes, but a grin stretched across his face from ear-to-ear, and he sat up a straighter, the peacock.

Tony pulled the canvas over the sentry, pointed a finger in Clint’s face and said, “Don’t touch.” He smacked Clint’s fingers as he immediately went for the edge of the canvas. “I mean it, Barton, you mess up my constructs and I will boil you in maple syrup.”

Clint let out a sputtering laugh. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

Lifting an eyebrow, Tony asked, “Do you know the boiling point of sugar?” At Clint’s thoughtful look, Tony smirked and crossed the lab to the couch. He plopped down in Natasha’s abandoned seat and leaned over Steve’s arm to examine the so called superhero-Clint.

“So what’s my superhero going to be?” Tony asked after a moment of watching Steve shade in Clint’s lookalike.

Steve glanced over at him. “Do you want one?”

Scandalized, Tony put a hand to his chest. “You didn’t immediately think of me when putting together a cast of superheroes?”

Steve’s smile was sweet and somehow shy when he answered, “You don’t need a superhero alter ego, Tony.” He nudged Tony’s shoulder, “You already have one.” When Tony just blinked at him, Steve said, “Your armor.” His smile turned wicked and he added, “I’ll name you The Raging Bull Buffalo.”

Choking on a startled laugh, Tony said, “The kids will love it.”


	6. Chapter Five

**CHAPTER FIVE::**

The house was barely recognizable. When they’d arrived the day before, the three story townhouse was so filled to bursting with staff and caterers that Steve couldn’t tell how big it was or what it would like look on a normal day. By the time guests started arriving, it was a glittering palace, decked in fairy lights, the ceiling enchanted to sprinkle down illusory snow, ice sculptures that bowed to passing guests fitted in niches, and tables full of culinary delights, lively music filling the house. Tony had designated the first two floors to the party-goers, blatantly leaving bedroom doors open with signs hung on the outside to indicate ‘occupied’ or ‘come in.’ Steve wandered through the transformed hallways and marveled at all the tiny details that he wasn’t sure any of the guests would consciously notice, like the movement of the deer on the study wallpaper.

“Cap, catch!” Steve turned and lifted his hand automatically, catching a flying whir of color. He turned it over in his hands and looked up at Tony with one eyebrow quirked. It was a demi mask in deep blue and red that would cover his eyes, forehead, and one cheek. There was a white star under one eye and the tie ended in a tassel of white streamers.

“Not exactly subtle,” he pointed out, holding it up to his face. Tony grinned at him and took the mask to help him tie it behind his head. The inside was lined in silk and it felt curiously luxurious against his face.

“It’s a Stark party,” Tony explained, “You don’t have to be subtle, it’s just for plausible deniability, an excuse to be wild and do naughty things that you never have to admit to later.” He adjusted the mask on Steve’s face, brushing his fingers over the edges. “You should let Natasha khol your eyes. It would make them glow.”

Steve wasn’t sure why, but the comment made him flush. He leaned down in the middle of a not-empty hallway and sealed his mouth to Tony’s, pressing his tongue between Tony’s lips and claiming his mouth like uncharted territory. Tony moved with him, lifting onto his toes to lean into the kiss, shoving Steve’s tongue back and retaliating with his own.

“Starting early, I see,” Natasha’s amused voice interrupted. Steve reluctantly pulled away and Tony dropped back onto his heels with an annoyed sound. Natasha was lovely in a silk gown of fluttering sapphire, her demi mask a brilliant gold bedecked in what looked like actual gems.

“The guests are already arriving,” Tony said as if in protest, and he still hadn’t let go of the lapels of Steve’s suit.

“And you should be out greeting them.” She held up a mask of red and gold, her deep red lips twitching in amusement.

Tony took it from her and slid it on with a longsuffering sigh. “Go khol Cap’s eyes,” he ordered in parting and then passed Steve to the stairs down to the first floor, playfully smacking his ass on the way. Steve jerked in surprise and spun, for some unfathomable reason more embarrassed by being smacked on the rear in public than he was exploring the back of Tony’s throat with his tongue. All he could think is that his grandmother would have fainted straightaway if she’d seen it.

Natasha let him stare after Tony for a baffled second and then put a hand on his arm. “Come on. Let’s go make you look like a pretty princess for the ball.”

“Do I need the khol?”

Natasha shrugged. “You don’t _not_ need the khol. Up to you.”

Steve didn’t think he could ever bring himself to just wear cosmetics out in public, but the mask did an amazing thing, making him feel at once invisible and bold. Natasha must have picked up the train of his thoughts, because she laughed and led him past the hired guards standing protectively at the stairs to the third floor and into her room.

~*~

Eyes lined in dark khol and face dusted with silver glitter, Steve led Natasha down the stairs to join the gathering on the first floor. The second floor was still largely empty, most of the guests not intoxicated enough to make them bold enough for the bedrooms. An unfamiliar laugh in a familiar voice made Steve pause on the stairs. He looked over the banister to see Tony with one arm around a girl with caramel skin in a gold dress with the mask to match, and a glass of campaign dangling over the shoulder of a redhead in green. Even as Steve watched, Tony turned to tuck his head against the redhead’s neck, making her giggle. He was surrounded by a group of ready admirers, laughing and swaying toward his magnetic pull.

“And there he is,” Natasha murmured, “Right on time.”

Steve thought she was talking about Tony, but her eyes were directed over Tony’s shoulder at the door. He was wearing a simple black mask and a finely tailored suit, but Steve instantly recognized the ambassador by his comb over and the slant of his shoulders. Natasha plastered herself briefly to his side and rose onto her toes to press a kiss just below his jaw.

“That’s my cue. Try to have some fun, Captain,” she suggested as she slithered away. In the distance of three steps, she transformed into a creature of pure seduction, her hips swaying, shoulders going back and up to make her look more vulnerable, chin tilted down to make her seem younger.

Steve watched the transformation uneasily and followed down the stairs to stand at Rhodey’s side. The pilot’s only concession to the madness was a plain mask in blue to match his suit, but he looked relaxed with a glass of whiskey in one hand. Steve got the sudden impression looking at it that the glass was just for show. Rhodey’s eyes followed Tony as he held moving court over the room, flitting from group to group and handing out smiles and kisses like candy.

“Is this typical of one of Tony’s parties?” Steve asked, taking a tumbler of scotch from a passing waiter bedecked in black and white livery with a white mask that covered his entire face. He took a sip and held the glass just below chest level, watching the guests stream through the doors in increasingly fantastic costumes and masks.

“This is pretty tame for a Stark party,” Rhodey answered, “But it was short notice, so I’m not surprised.”

“Tame,” Steve repeated. On the dance floor, Tony swept up a young woman and spun her around. She shrieked in delighted laughter and they fell into a complicated, energetic dance where her feet were off the ground more often than not.

“Just wait a few hours,” Rhodey suggested, “Once the weak of heart bow out for the night, the real party starts.” He took a fortifying swallow of his drink and warned, “Save your energy.”

Steve watched as Tony passed his nimble partner off and spun into the arms of a tall man with a shaved head, moving easily from leading to being led. His expression was so open and joyous, and completely unlike anything Steve had seen from him. It reminded him all at once that he didn’t really know Tony at all.

~*~

Tony kept an eye on Natasha and the ambassador throughout the night. He was sneaky and _perfect_ about exchanging champagne flutes with passing servers, slipping a full glass onto their tray and swiping one with a few sips left. He knew enough of what it felt like to be drunk to make a good show of it, and he really wished he _could_ be drunk, because there were just so many people who were suddenly his long-lost best friend, cozying up to him and whispering sweet seductions in his ear that it would really be better if weren’t sober enough to be annoyed by it.

The music paused briefly and then started again, a slow, seductive piece. Rhodey was his best friend for a reason, because there he was as if summoned, pulling Tony out of the clutches of an older lady who really wanted to make her home in the Carbonell house. _I wouldn’t even mind,_ she told him, voice slurring with champagne, _if you wanted to stay away from home, keep your pretty boys_.

Tony slid into Rhodey’s chest gratefully, draping his arms over his neck and resting his forehead on Rhodey’s shoulder. “Have I ever told you that I love you?” Tony asked. He was tired and his throat felt raw from shouting over the music all night. The arc reactor ached, the muscles on either side of his spine throbbed, and his feet ached. He could feel the pulse of the armor under his skin, like his bones were being squeezed. All the more reason he should be drinking for real.

“The crowd is starting to thin out,” Rhodey reported, holding the back of Tony’s neck in a possessive grip that wasn’t real – not like that – but was just meant to make the other grabby-handed guests think twice about interrupting their swaying dance. Tony looked around the room as they moved, spotting Natasha again with the ambassador. He was the sort that would have normally made polite goodbyes once the party started to devolve into young people running naked through the garden, people sneaking up the stairs with partners they wouldn’t go home with, the music turning from mostly sedate waltzes with a few swing numbers thrown in, to mostly blaring swing with a few sultry Latin numbers to break the pace. Natasha was the sort of woman who could hold anyone’s attention though, and he was happily ensconced in a chair with Natasha seated across from him, showing off one finely curved leg and her excellent German language skills.

“Where’s Cap?” Tony asked after a few rounds of the dance floor and Steve nowhere to be seen. He’d caught sight of the man only a few times during the night, gallantly waltzing a girl around the floor, chatting in a circle of straight-backed military men, helping unsteady guests out to their cars. Tony’s attempts to catch his attention had all been in vain.

Rhodey was quiet for a moment, and then blandly answered, “I think he’s getting some air.”

Tony’s attention sharpened. He leaned back until he could see Rhodey’s face. “What’s he upset about?”

“I didn’t say that.” Rhodey eased them around another couple drunkenly swaying in place without paying the slightest attention to the music.

“It’s what you said without saying it,” Tony countered, “So what’s got his knickers in a twist?”

“I think this might all just be a little much for him,” Rhodey said finally. “He’s not used to your kind of scene.”

Tony glared. “It’s not my kind of scene, not anymore.”

“I know.” The song came to an end and Rhodey held onto him for a second and then stepped away. “But the good captain doesn’t know that.”

The music kicked up again before Tony could respond, and Clint rushed in and swung him into a Collegiate Shag step to match the uptempo beat. Tony let go of the sudden annoyance with Steve and fell into the step, letting the pace of the music wash out the aches and exhaustion. Clint was a fantastic dancer with some of the best coordination of any partner he’d ever had, and amazing balance. Not that Tony should have been surprised. They swapped roles from one step to the next, Tony curling his arms around Clint’s shoulders one moment and then flipping around to lift Clint – briefly- off his feet. Laughing, Clint planted his feet and swung Tony over his head, just to prove he could. The gathered crowd cheered, and they moved out of the center of floor to give way to a pair of girls in beaded skirts.

“Keep your eye on Nat,” Clint suggested, briefly pulling Tony against his chest in a more sedate set of steps. “The crowd is distracted enough.”

Tony did as Clint suggested, eventually sliding out of his arms and charming a young girl onto the dance floor. She stumbled in his arms and blushed under her turquois and peacock feathered mask. Tony gave her a kind smile and walked her through a few basic steps while he kept his eyes on Natasha in the corner. The song ended, the next began, and Clint slid in behind him, giving the girl a flirtatious wink.

He pressed his mouth to Tony’s ear and invited, “Come upstairs with me.”

The girl blushed and Tony darted his eyes over to the stairs to see Natasha leading the ambassador up by his tie. Tony swooped down to kiss the girl on the cheek and passed her off to a young boy standing awkwardly at the edge of the dance floor. “Teach him the ropes,” Tony suggested to her, kissing her hand, “And forgive my rudeness.”

She blushed brighter and reached out shyly to the boy, leaving Tony free to take Clint’s hand and weave straight through the center of the dance floor for the stairs. They made a laughing, stumbling spectacle of themselves up the stairs, Clint curled around his back with his mouth nuzzled into Tony’s neck. They passed Steve coming down from the second floor balcony and Tony glared as Steve’s gaze focused in on Clint’s mouth pressed into his neck, and then up to Tony’s face. His eyes narrowed under the mask and his jaw went tight, and Tony was not prepared to deal with that. He set his jaw, grabbed Clint by the hair and kissed him on the mouth. By the time he looked up, Steve’s face was carefully blank.

“You two keep each other company,” Tony suggested, letting go of Clint’s startled mouth and pushing him into Steve’s chest. “I have another date.”

Without looking at Steve again, Tony slid between his guards and up the stairs to the third floor. He sighed in heartfelt relief as the music faded to a dull thunder, and reached up to take off the mask. It was as comfortable as a demi mask could be made, but still pressing into his cheeks and temples to give him a headache. The third floor hallway was wonderfully quiet and deserted, and Tony lingered outside the study door for a minute, listening to the silken twist of Natasha’s voice and letting his ears recover. He waited until the timber of her voice changed, going a little higher, and then casually opened the door.

Natasha had Welczeck in one of the deeply cushioned chairs that were hard to get out of in a hurry, and she was seated across his knees. He startled at the door opening and tried to push her up, but she steadied herself on the back of the chair and just looked over her shoulder in askance.

“The room is occupied,” Welczeck tried to say, and then peered under Natasha’s arm. “Mr. Stark!” He tried to get up again, but Natasha didn’t budge.

Tony waved him down with a magnanimous smile. “Please, ambassador, call me Tony.” He hooked a simple wooden chair from the wall beside the door and sat it down across from the ambassador. Welczeck looked between them suspiciously, his eyes growing wide and alarmed as Tony offered Natasha his hand. She took it, standing elegantly.

“I’ll be next door,” she said, swiping a finger along her bottom lip to tidy her lipstick.

“Thank you,” Tony said sincerely.

Without even glancing at the ambassador, she strode out of the room, all the easy seduction vanishing from her posture as she picked up her normal stride, shoulders back and down, head held up high, gait even and strong. The ambassador watched her go with a look of slack shock. Tony just waited, watching him, until he finally reached up and untied his mask.

“If you wanted to speak to me, Mr. Sta-… Tony,” he amended, setting the mask aside, “You didn’t need to seduce me up here. You could have made an appointment at my office.” He spoke in French with a faint Berlin accent to sharpen the vowels.

Tony inclined his head mutely and picked up the language himself. “It’s something of a more delicate nature than I think you’d like to discuss in your office, Ambassador. You should feel honored – I put on this whole charade just to make it safe for you to talk to me.” He flashed a toothy smile at the man, the same smile he gave his father when he reported that the military school had decided to graduate him early, the same smile he handed to the reporters when he made light of being kidnapped because, hey, it got him out of board meetings.  

Welczeck eyed him very carefully. He had a weak chin, red cheeks, and a severely receded hairline – he looked like a cheerful, good natured man, but his eyes were sharp and intelligent above the heavy bags. “What is it, exactly, that you would like to discuss, Tony?” He put a subtle emphasis on the name that Tony didn’t really like. He wasn’t fond of being called _Mr. Stark_ by anyone but Pepper or Jarvis, but he wished that he’d let that formality stand.

“I am looking for someone,” Tony admitted, “I think you can help me find them, and I’m willing to reward you generously for the information.”

Considering Tony’s request and tone, Welczeck gave him a thin smile and asked, “Who are you looking for, and why?”

“The why is none of your concern, Johannes,” Tony said, smiling sharply when the ambassador’s eyes narrowed. “As for who… I doubt you would know him by his name. He’s being held by Hydra.”

Welczeck’s expression shut down immediately, jaw going tight and eyes going wide. “Hydra? Is that a person? What a strange name.”

“Don’t bullshit with me,” Tony said. He wished that they had gone with the initial plan of just kidnapping the ambassador out of his home and interrogating him, rather than bending to Bruce’s good sense and not causing an international incident in a country already teetering on the edge of war with Germany. He was just tired after the night of smiling, being too close to too many strangers and their clouds of perfume, their grabby hands, their jealousy and greed. “All I want to know is where Hydra might be holding a valuable magical artifact, and who I need to talk to about getting him back.”

The color drained out of Welczeck’s face. He waved his hands sharply in front of him and scooted up in the chair so he could stand. “I do not have the slightest idea of what you might be speaking, Mr. Stark!” he said angrily, “And I resent being lured to this gathering of perverts, only to be accosted by the host!”

Tony hiked an eyebrow and opened his mouth to respond, but something stopped him. He snapped his mouth shut and frowned as a sudden buzzing sense of _wrong_ rippled up his neck. Welczeck tried to stand and Tony reached over with a casual hand and shoved the man back in his chair. The weird warning sense increase and Tony ignored the ambassador’s outraged snarl. He stood himself, holding one hand out to him to be quiet, but Welczeck shoved his hand away and tried to stand again.

The tattoos down Tony’s left arm flared to sudden, angry life. Tony grabbed Welczeck by the jacket and yanked him out of the chair, barely noticing that he’d moved until a bolt _thunk’ed_ into the chair where Welczeck’s chest had been a moment before. The wards shrieked across his skin, unhelpfully reporting that a third floor window had been breached. Welczeck still didn’t realize what was happening as Tony yanked him down and shoved him behind the heavy wooden desk. More bolts _thunk-thunk-thunk’ed_ into the room, ripping into the bookcases and furniture.

“Stay down!” Tony shouted to the ambassador, who stared wide-eyed at the bolt splintering Tony’s antique desk. Tony struggled out of his jacket and ripped off his shirt, sending buttons pinging around the room as he hustled Welczeck to the door in a low crouch. Four bolts ripped into the doorframe in quick succession and Tony threw the ambassador back to the floor, shoving his shoulder into the desk to knock it to floor in a messy crash. He activated the armor in a frenzy, too fast, too hot, and still trapped in his clothing. It burned through the fabric, setting it aflame as it settled over Tony’s limbs, peeling through his skin and latching onto his spine. His clothing drifted to the floor in charred tatters. He could hear feet running from down the hall, but in the next breath, every lightbulb in the room popped, and he heard the faint sounds of a small explosion through the door.

The window shattered in the next moment, and a darkly clad figure rolled into the room. He came up shooting, firing off rounds with a smoothly augmented pistol. Even in the last agonizing instant of getting the faceplate up, Tony heard the sweet rapport of the gun and wanted to cheer, it was so wonderfully done. He rolled to put his armored body between Welczeck and the desk, hissing at the sharp crack of bullets against his back. He charged the repulsor in his left hand, and then bounced to his feet at the first pause in the shots, firing off a blast of energy while he charged the other. The attacker grunted in surprise and rolled out of the way. He fired off another shot at Tony, hitting him in the forehead, and the dove back out the window just as Natasha crashed in through the door with gun in hand.

“Are you hit?”

“Just the armor,” Tony reported, his voice hollow and metallic through the suit. “What was that explosion?”

“Minor diversion, just a lot of noise and light. The ambassador?”

As if unfrozen, Welczeck surged up and grabbed Tony by his gorget, shaking him. “Who did you tell about me?”

“No one,” Natasha answered for him. “Our source wouldn’t have betrayed us either,” she continued, even though Tony wasn’t completely sure that was accurate. He hoped Danny understood what Tony would do to him for a betrayal that put his crew in danger, but he’d proven himself a weasel once already and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. “This looks like an opportunity kill. No one knew you would be here until this morning, so they must have been following you, waiting for the right time.” Natasha didn’t add _it’s what I would have done_ , but Tony heard it.

“Who is that and why would they want to kill you?” Tony asked, grabbing the ambassador by his wrist.

“I don’t know,” Welczeck maintained stubbornly, tugging on him. “Let me go.”

“Think about this carefully, Ambassador,” Natasha suggested as she crossed the room to the broken window and peered out carefully, “What is more likely to get you killed right now – running out of the house in a frenzy, or telling us what we want to know so we can track them down?”

Welczeck snorted. “Like you would be doing me a favor?”

“Nothing to do with you,” Tony agreed, “But the way I see it, that was either a French assassin trying to push the country into war, or it was a German assassin trying to make it look like a French assassin trying to push the country into war. Which do you think is more likely?”

Welczeck made an unhappy noise and sank into a chair to run his hands over his face. He let out a heavy breath in a laugh and whispered, “He said they were escalating the timeline.”

“Who said that?” Tony pressed.

Wincing, Welczeck confessed, “My contact in Hydra. I didn’t think… “ He laughed derisively at himself. “I should have, after Barthou…”  

Tony exchanged a quick glance with Natasha – that was one kill on the list of suspected Hydra assassinations.

“Tell us where we can find them and maybe they’ll be too busy dealing with us to worry about you,” Natasha said reasonably.

“It doesn’t matter. If they have decided to kill me, I will die.” He looked up at them. “Maybe it is the only chance I will have for revenge.” He sighed again and asked, “Do you have a map of Europe?”

~*~

For a moment Steve thought the creaking was the sound of his teeth clenched together, but the whine of stone under stress finally impacted and he jerked his hands away from the railing before he could crush it. The night air was cool, but not cold, and a definite relief from all the mingled perfume, body odor, and food smells of the party. Steve took slow breaths and hung his head, confused at the strength of the reaction in his blood. He didn’t own Tony, and he wasn’t in any position to demand or even, realistically, _offer_ a relationship. It wasn’t seeing him with other people that made Steve’s blood boil – it was the subtle but shocking difference in him. There was a blinding joy on his face as he slid from one stranger’s embrace to another, and he’d curled so comfortably in Clint’s arms like he knew what it meant to be there when Steve had thought all their flirting was just the game with no conclusion. Steve couldn’t tell if this was Tony in his element, or if the witty, surprisingly vulnerable, amazingly generous lover was his true face. Steve didn’t demand much from casual lovers, but honesty was something he expected from a friend.

After losing so much, losing _everything_ , Steve had felt like he was drifting, unanchored while anyone he tried to hold onto pulled away from him. As frightening and shameful as it was to admit, finding out Bucky was alive and in need of rescue breathed life back into his lungs – he had a purpose, a mission, and it gave him direction, but still no solid land. Bucky was _his_ friend, the mission was his, and yet he was following in Tony’s wake like a lost duckling. Tony had told him that it wasn’t for Steve, that he had his own reasons for going after Schmidt, but he wouldn’t share them, and Steve was left to simply rely on faith that Tony was steering them in the right direction. All that faith, and Steve had no idea who he was following.

The whisper of footsteps and the faint sound of heavy breathing down the hall called Steve’s attention away from his morose musings. He turned away from the banister and peered back through the doors, frowning in confusion. After Tony and Clint’s display on the second floor, Steve had escaped to the third floor to avoid the suffocating press of the party guests. No one but the crew of _The Iron Avenger_ and any guests they personally escorted up the stairs were supposed to be on the floor, and Steve didn’t recognize the footsteps. He slid to one side of the open French doors and used the opposite door’s reflection to watch the stairs. An unfamiliar dark haired boy in caterer’s livery crept up the stairs with a serving dish in hand. Steve frowned – he could just be bringing Bruce dinner, but why did he look like he was sneaking?

Wishing he’d had an excuse to carry his shield, Steve strode back into the hall and turned down the stairs. The boy was so startled that he dropped the tray, messily sliding down three steps before he caught himself on the handrail. He looked up at Steve with wide, terrified eyes, mouth parting in a soundless _o_ of surprise.

Feeling silly, Steve hurried down the stairs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He helped the boy pick up the spilled food items. He couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, and he had a hollow, hungry look to him. Steve offered him a hand and introduced himself.

Startled, the boy hesitantly shook his hand. “Herschel Grynszpan,” he said and then froze and gave Steve a suspicious, worried look. Steve had the immediate impression that the boy had meant to give a false name, but slipped up out of habit.

Steve wondered if maybe Herschel was famous – or infamous – and looking for a little anonymity at Tony’s soiree, maybe ducking an influential father who wouldn’t approve of him sneaking into such a wild party. “Your secret’s safe with me,” Steve said after a moment’s consideration. “But what are you doing up here? This area is off limits.”

“I was just…” Herschel looked up to the top of the stairs, eyebrows creased in concern, a damp sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Curious,” he said finally.

“Did the guards let you up?”

Herschel bowed his head, and then nodded. “I told them I was asked to bring up food,” he confessed.

“There’s nothing at all exciting up here,” Steve said, patting the embarrassed boy on the shoulder. He offered Herschel a smile and handed him the reassembled tray. “I won’t tattle, but you’d best not try it again,” Steve said sternly, but softened the blow by squeezing Herschel’s shoulder. The boy shied away from him and Steve let him go immediately. He watched as the caterer slunk back down the stairs, and then followed a second later.

“Please don’t let anyone else up unless one of the crew comes down to tell you otherwise,” he requested politely, giving the guards a pointed look. The pair were obviously bored, just serving as a living velvet rope to turn away the curious. Steve doubted either of them were expecting – or likely to get – anyone truly determined to get up the stairs after being asked to leave. Still, they at least had the decency to look abashed.

“Of course, Captain Rogers,” the older of the pair said, and Steve turned back to the stairs. He was just debating between heading back out to the balcony or his room when a sudden shock of sound exploded down the hall. Steve was running before he consciously identified it as an actual explosion, veering toward Natasha’s door, where smoke was leaking out around the frame. Across the hall, the lab door slammed open and Bruce leaned out, looking both worried and nervous.

“What was that?” he demanded, crossing his arms over his stomach and holding onto his elbows.

Steve didn’t waste time answering that he didn’t know. He boldly grabbed the door handle, knowing that his enhanced body would heal any damage if it was hot. It did feel warm, but not scalding, and he yanked the door open just as Natasha pushed from the other side. She fell into his arms, coughing clutching at her ears with her eyes tightly closed. Steve handed her off to Bruce and ducked in the room to make sure she had been alone, horrifying visions of seeing Clint or the ambassador in pieces around the room flashing behind his eyes. The room was thankfully empty, and there was far less damage than he expected. Running back into the hall, he crashed to his knees at Natasha’s side. Bruce had her seated against the wall, and was shining a tiny light into her eyes.

She finally got in a good breath and gasped out, “Under attack!”

“No kidding,” Steve replied. “Where did they go?”

Natasha shoved away from the wall, using Steve’s shoulder to get back to her feet. “Check outside,” she ordered, “I’ll check on Stark.”

Steve tried to protest, but she was already taking off down the hallway, regaining her equilibrium even as he watched. Steve felt a sudden rush of fear for Tony, but he had to trust his team, and he _did_ trust that Natasha knew what she was doing, and that she wouldn’t put their teammates at risk by taking on something that was beyond her.

“I’ll get Rhodey and Clint,” Bruce said hurriedly, already getting to his feet.

Steve nodded and ran for his shield just as the first crack of gunfire sounded from the opposite direction. He cursed loudly, but continued his forward motion to his room. He snagged the shield from where it was left leaning against the wall and ran for his window. Whoever was firing on Tony and the ambassador would have to go through the window. There was a small porch just outside, barely more than a foot deep and not good for more than flower boxes, and for jumping from window to window. He lept onto the sill and ran neatly across the five windows that separated his room from the study, making the five foot leap between each with barely a glance. A dark figure launched out the study window when Steve was just next door. He caught sight of Steve, but didn’t make a sound as he turned and ran the opposite direction, taking the leap between porches with the same ease Steve did, and then launching off the last to a tree branch that would have been out of the normal man’s range.

Following grimly, Steve made the leap to the branch, swung himself to land his feet against the trunk and used it like a springboard. He pushed off, twisting in mid-air, and rolled twice as he hit the ground, coming up quickly to his feet. His quary already had a healthy head start on him, running full out on the manicured lawns. Steve changed his grip on the shield and threw it hard, aiming to knock the man off his feet and keep him down long enough to be captured. As if he’d read Steve’s mind, the dark clothed assassin turned and caught the shield by the rim, the force of the shield’s momentum carrying him back several stumbling feet. Steve stopped and stared in shock, too dumbfounded to move for a split second. In that moment, the man cocked his hand back over his body and flung the shield back. Steve didn’t even have the opportunity to dodge, and instead just held his hands out. He still caught the shield mostly with his stomach, the force of the throw making him slide in the grass. He took a hasty four steps backward to keep from falling over and hissed, one of his ribs broken, several bones in his hands fractured, and one thumb dislocated by the impact. He straightened up against the pain, but the man was already over the wall and gone.

Steve dropped the shield to his feet and hastily reset the dislocated thumb, stretching his fingers out to judge the rest of the damage. There were several fractures in his hands, but nothing was out of place, so they would at least heal evenly. His rib was another matter, but he would have to give his healing abilities time to work on his hands before he would have enough strength in his fingers to push it back in. He breathed through the fire of the healing, curling and stretching his fingers until he could move them without pain, and then twisted and put his hand over the broken rib, stretching his torso and pushing hard to get it back in place. He whimpered softly at the lightning shock of pain, but the break started to knit back together within minutes. By the time he made it to the back door, he could breathe without gasping, and it would be healed entirely within an hour.

Rhodey and Bruce met him at the stairs. None of the guests had even noticed the commotion, the music pounding along, a few couples still gamely dancing away, but more and more of them slouched in exhaustion or locked up in an amorous embrace of one kind or another. Bruce opened his mouth, but Steve shook his head sharply and gestured them to the stairs.

“Someone needs to stay down here,” Steve said as they neared the stairs.

“Not me,” Bruce said immediately, “You do not want me in a roomful of innocents if things start getting loud.”

“Clint is up in the rafters,” Rhodey said and then added, “Don’t look up,” when Steve’s eyes automatically drifted upward.

Steve nodded and got them moving again. The guards blinked at Steve as he passed, giving each other uneasy looks, but neither willing to admit that he hadn’t seen Steve come down. As soon as they were on the third floor and around the corner, Steve asked, “Tony?”

“Haven’t been back up yet,” Bruce said, tone heavy with worry. They hurried down the hallway to the study. Finding it empty, they turned as one body for the lab. Tony sat at one of the tables with a map spread out in front of him, still bedecked in the armor with only the faceplate pulled back.

“Are you alright?” Steve asked immediately, beating Rhodey to it by only moments and doing his best to keep the lung-crushing relief out of his voice.

Tony’s eyes flickered briefly to them and then back to the map. “Fine. Natasha has the ambassador in the panic room for now.” He dropped his pencil on the table and stood so they could see the map. “These are the bases that our friend knows of.”

“He gave you the intel?” Rhodey asked, surprised.

“The way he sees it, his buddies in Hydra just tried to have him killed. It wouldn’t be the first time they used a political assassination to shake things up between France and Germany. Best chance he has of getting out of this mess alive is if Hydra is too busy with us to worry about him.”

Steve nodded in agreement. “I chased the operative, and the ambassador is probably right. I had trouble keeping up with him, and he moved like me, reacted to me almost as if he could read my mind. If he’s not augmented, I’ll eat my hat.”

“He was fast, that’s for sure. I don’t think he was expecting any kind of resistance – I startled him and he bailed.” Tony made a frustrated noise. “I can’t believe the wards missed him scaling the wall, and then climbing to the third floor. I felt him leave.”

“I don’t think he did scale the wall to get in,” Steve said. “I think he avoided your wards altogether by jumping from tree-to-tree, and then onto the window porch. He hit the ground on the way out and jumped the wall, but he was aiming more for speed than stealth at that point.”

“There are no trees close enough to the wall for that kind of bullshit,” Tony protested, “I saw to it myself.”

“Not for a normal person,” Rhodey interjected, “But for someone who could give Cap a run for his money? Who’s to say what he could be capable of, and making a long jump would be the least imaginative thing I can think of.”

Tony pushed the faceplate back further so he could scratch at his head. The motion drew Steve’s attention to an angry red mark on his forehead and he moved without thinking, grabbing Tony by the neck and turning his face to get better light on it. “What happened here?” he demanded, but he already knew, could tell from the shape of the impact. “Were you _shot in the head_?”

Rhodey’s head snapped up and Tony rolled his eyes, yanking out of Steve’s grip. “Just a little.”

“A _little_? How do you get a _little_ shot in the head, Tony?”

“I was wearing the armor! No harm, no foul. It’s just a little red, it will go away soon, and hopefully take the headache along with it.” He stepped back several feet when Steve reached for him again, putting the table in between them.

Steve pursed his lips, but he let Tony have his space. He turned back to Rhodey. “Our priority right now is getting the ambassador home safe and sound,” Steve decided, glancing over the map. “We can take care of this tomorrow.”

Rhodey agreed with a nod, dragging his concerned gaze slowly away from Tony. “I’ll get him an escort.”

“I’ll take him myself,” Steve said, “We can’t have the last place he’s seen be Tony’s home, and I could use the walk.” He turned to leave, but stopped and turned back. “Have any of you ever heard of a Herschel Grynszpan?”

Tony mutely shook his head, and Bruce commented, “The name sounds Polish… maybe Jewish.”

“Why?” Rhodey asked.

Steve shrugged. “Just a kid I ran into. Probably nothing, but I thought I would bring it up.” He cast one more glance at Tony and then abandoned the room.

~*~

Curled comfortably in a crossbeam with one leg over the brace, Clint observed the slowly thinning crowd below. Those who had the presence of mind to get home had already left, the staff arranging for taxis where the inebriated party-goers were lacking drivers, and pouring people into bed if they refused to leave or weren’t conscious. A doctor made the rounds around the room, checking on guests and feeding them potions. Despite the brief burst of excitement, it had been a relatively uneventful night, and a fairly mundane party for Tony.

Checking his watch, Clint pulled out a round mirror. He stared down at it for several long seconds, tracing the lines of his own reflection. His purple eyeliner was smudged into a bruise around his eyes, hiding the circles that were already there, and he needed a shave. He hesitated, considering climbing down to clean up, maybe steal some of Nat’s powder, put on a clean shirt. Clint snorted in derisive laughter and stuck his finger in his mouth. He traced the wet digit over the mirror in a quick pattern, just a code to activate the construct etched in the back.

The mirror turned to an opaque mist, pulsing a soft blue in time with his heartbeat. He was just giving up waiting when the mist swirled and coalesced into Phil Coulson’s familiar visage.

“What’s happened?” Phil asked immediately, “Do you need evac?” It was his official voice, the one that had talked Clint through dozens of bad missions, stayed with him when he was too injured to get to his exfiltration site, berated him when he took stupid risks with his life, provided intel and encouragement.

Clint blinked down at the mirror, startled. “Can’t I just call to say hello?” he asked.

Phil was quiet for several seconds. His voice was just the slightest bit softer when he replied, “Is that why you’re calling?”

Clint knew immediately that Phil would have an excuse to get off the line if he said yes, so he shook his head. “There’ve been some developments on this end. Thought you might like to know.”

“I’m on vacation,” Phil said slowly, as if carefully considering every word and then dumbing it down for Clint’s benefit. “If you have intel, you should be in contact with Hill.”

“Like you’re not burning up with curiosity?” Clint teased. His eyes flickered around the edge of the mirror to check on the guests. One girl in a bright pink frock was swaying around the dance floor, her hands up as if holding onto a ghostly lover, her head lulling to her own shoulder. In the corner, a pile of limbs moved sluggishly, people slowly extricating themselves from what looked like a complicated orgy.

“Where are you?” Phil asked, getting Clint’s attention again.

“In the rafters at the Carbonell house. They’re pretty clean for a house that hardly ever sees human inhabitation. Tony must have anti-dust bunny spells all over the place.” Clint fell quiet, examining his ex-handler in closer detail. For a man on vacation, Phil looked like shit. He was pale, eyes heavily lined, mouth drawn down in an exhausted frown. Maybe it was just the light. “How are you enjoying your vacation, sir?”

“I’ve been to see the world’s largest ball of twine,” Phil said, “Mount Rushmore, several ball games, too many fairs, a strawberry festival, and Yellowstone. I’m considering running away to join the circus.”

His voice was so even that Clint wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. “You wouldn’t like a life with the circus,” Clint said finally, “Too many dirty carnies. You’d go crazy inside a week.” Though really, Phil would probably march into the circus camp and have everything running like a dream within a month. He thought about it for a second, imagined his old crew lining up for inspection, snapping of _yes, sir_ ’s and _no sir_ ’s and _sorry, sir, it won’t happen again_ ’s. He snickered, keeping up the image so he didn’t have to consider the implication of _too many dirties carnies_. Maybe that was what had eventually driven a wedge between them – Clint being just altogether too messed up for someone as put together as Phil Coulson.

“Well, if you’re going to call and entirely ruin whatever chance I had at plausible deniability,” Phil said finally, “You might as well at least tell me what’s going on.”

Clint settled himself into a more comfortable position and quickly outlined the events of the last several days, and slipped in that Natasha and Steve were fine before Phil had to come up with a crafty way to ask.

“And the most important thing,” Clint concluded solemnly, “Is that I’m going to be a superhero in a comic book.” He waited for Phil to react, took his pair of slow eyeblinks as raving approval and added, “Maybe you can collect paraphernalia of _me_ now.”

The silence felt thick after that, Clint not sure if Phil wanted to smack him or laugh. It stretched for an awkward half minute, and then Phil said, “Thank you for the report, Agent. You had better get back to your post.”

Disappointed, Clint nodded and swiped his finger across the mirror’s surface to end the connection. Below him, the last of the guests were being either herded up the stairs or out the door. Clint rolled to his feet and made quick, light progress across the beams. He dropped down at the end, catching onto the thick timber and swinging himself to the second floor banister. A man slouched against the wall blinked up at him in drunken bafflement and asked, “Are you an angel?”

Clint suppressed a snort of laughter and said, “Yes, dear child.”

Gaping, the guest crawled forward on hands and knees and wrapped his arms around Clint’s ankles. “Can I ride a rainbow with you?” he mumbled into Clint’s shoes.

“Looks like you already are, buddy,” Clint muttered, covering his mouth with one hand to keep himself from laughing. He reached down and helped him stand, and the man started singing immediately, voice trailing off and the rising in sudden bursts of beer-scented, off-key garbles. The beds were all occupied, but Clint poured him onto a chaise lounge in the hallway. He reached underneath the ruffle to pull out a blanket and draped it over his shoulders, and then grabbed one of the decorative buckets thoughtfully lining the hall and set it by his head.

“Sleep well,” he said cheerfully, but he was already out cold.

Shaking his head, Clint ambled up to the third floor. Nat and Bruce were on watch on the roof, but Clint didn’t expect they would have any more issues. If there was one thing Stark knew, it was his wards, and Clint suspected that Tony had already put a temporary patch on whatever rat hole the would-be assassin had made it in through. With the ambassador out of the house and the crew on high alert, Hydra would have to be stupid to make a run at them again.

As he rounded the corner onto the private floor, Clint caught sight of Steve lingering outside Tony’s door. Steve’s fingers drifted over the doorknob and then curled into a fist. Without noticing Clint, he turned and walked into his own room across the hall.

Clint sighed and ran a hand down his face. “Idiot,” he muttered, but he left it alone and crossed to the room he would be sharing with Nat if she came down off the roof at all that night. He knew she would be blaming herself for the attack, and would overcompensate by pushing herself to the limit to make sure it didn’t happen again. He would just have to wait until she exhausted herself to talk a little sense into her.


	7. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX::

“An unfortunate pattern is starting to emerge,” Tony said, crouching to watch the finder drift over the map. It was following the same heading they were, pointing to the area the ambassador outlined as the nearest Hydra bases. He didn’t have the exact location of any bases, but had shaded in the general region of the three he knew of – the closest was due east of Paris, somewhere on the spike that jutted into Germany, but on the French side of the line. Tony continued to shift the map under the finder, but whatever had caught the finder’s attention wasn’t close enough to get a lock.

“If all of these bases are using my tech, then we didn’t even need the damn ambassador.” He frowned down at the map.

“Why haven’t you picked up Hydra bases before if they’re using your constructs?” Steve asked. He kept the same careful distance between them that Bruce kept with everyone else. It annoyed Tony, and the fact that it annoyed him made him angry. If Captain Judgmental wanted to keep his hands to himself, that was no business of Tony’s. In a way it was almost a relief that he’d disappointed Steve early on and didn’t have to spend any more time waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Who says we haven’t?” Tony answered, and refused to elaborate further.

Steve waited a moment for him to continue and then made a frustrated noise against the back of his throat. He drew in a breath as if to speak, and then shook his head. “I’m going to head below and see if Natasha needs any help.”

Tony bit off saying something petty and jealous, and instead just made a noise that sounded like acknowledgement. Steve hesitated for another second before he abandoned the helm, leaving Tony alone with the bite of the wind and creak of the ship to keep him company. He took his gloves off just feel the polished curves of the wheel under his hands, the ridges of the constructs etched into the wood, the pulse of the ship against his skin. If he pushed hard enough, the ship would tell him where every living creature stood within the range of its wards. He didn’t push.

~*~

It could have just been a gust of wind, except that Bruce’s heart rate skyrocketed almost before the ship pitched to the port side, the snarling animal under his skin taking immediate notice of all the hundred subtle hints that Bruce couldn’t pick out when he had control of his higher brain functions. His nerves were on a trigger after the explosion at the party, and he grabbed the edge of the table and sucked in quick breaths, squeezing his eyes shut to fight down the sudden surge of fear-worry-anger that would just cycle if he let it, drown him, make the world blurry and soft.

“You okay down there, Greenbean?”

It took Bruce half a heartbeat to recognize Tony’s voice through the mirror. It was the _green_ that did it, a code word Tony had drilled into him at significant, _stupid_ , risk to his life and Bruce’s sanity. Bruce’s heart calmed slowly, his chest loosening, the sickly flush fading from his skin. He gulped in a breath.

“Good,” Bruce choked out. He took in another shaky breath. “What was that?”

“Our reputation precedes us, Bruceybear. You might want to wander your way to the drop door.” Tony’s voice held that particular distracted quality that meant he was lost in a construct and still somehow paying attention to a dozen other things at once.

“Bad one?” Bruce guessed wearily, but he started taking off his shirt even as he asked. The drop door was his one condition for joining Tony on his mad quest – a panel in the bowels of the ship that could drop his bad tempered other half out of the ship if he ever had an accident. Somewhere between a mob house outside Chicago and a slave house in the south of China, it had gone from an escape hatch to a launching bay, dropping his bad tempered other half on unsuspecting enemy heads. His stomach clenched in anxious guilt as he moved for the door, but it was a better burden to carry than the deaths of innocents, and a price he paid willingly to protect his few friends.

Running across Steve in the hallway, Bruce pressed himself to the bulkhead and politely shifted past him. He nodded, summoning up a smile that felt sick on his face. “Captain.”

Steve followed him down the corridor, taking a few quick steps to catch up. “I understand you’re headed groundside?” he asked as another explosion rocked the ship violently to the stern. Bruce reached out with one hand to catch the bulkhead, and grabbed Steve’s elbow with the other. Steve didn’t need to be steadied, but he didn’t yank out of Bruce’s grasp either.

“Taking the express route, I’m afraid,” Bruce explained, fiddling with his belt as they neared the hatch.

Steve nodded and hoisted his shield up higher. “Mind some company?”

“You might not like that very much.” Bruce gave him another smile and really just wanted to shout _go away_ , but Bruce didn’t shout any more. It was bad for his blood pressure.

“I’m not going to be much good up here,” Steve argued, obviously not getting the hint as he followed Bruce through the hatch and into the lowest level of the ship. It was a wide open space. In extreme emergencies, it could be used to house refugees or for storing supplies, but Bruce insisted that the drop door in the center and the path to get to it remain free and clear. He stood in the middle of the door and arched an eyebrow at Steve. Steve looked back at him calmly, just waiting. After an awkward moment of staring, Bruce finally let his breath out and shrugged. Everyone eventually saw him naked anyway. Not bothering with any modesty, he shucked out of his pants and tossed them to a far corner.

“Better stand back, Captain.”

“I’ll take the gig if I have to, but it would be much faster if you took me down with you.” Steve flipped his shield casually over his shoulder and gave Bruce a patient look. “Please?”

“We’re two hundred feet above the ground. That’s barely more than a tumble for the Other Guy, but you’ll splat like a bug.” He stumbled as another hit impacted on the port side, and then winced. Tony was going to be in a froth over the damage to the paint job.

Steve grinned at him. “He’s carried Clint before.”

“He likes Clint,” Bruce protested, starting to get annoyed. “He’s never met you.”

Without a trace of fear, Steve stepped onto the drop door and grinned at Bruce. “I’m a very likeable fella,” he said, slinging an arm around Bruce’s shoulder.

Bruce blinked at him for a long second, and he might have just stood there all day, but the communications mirror in the ceiling flared to life, flooding the dimly lit room with bright afternoon sunlight. “You two lovebirds going to get down to it anytime soon?” Tony asked. Bruce heard the slight tension on the vowels that gave away stress, but to anyone else he might have been lounging poolside.

“I might break your new friend, Tony.”

“No breaking,” Tony replied instantly. “Play nice, Jolly Green.”

Shaking his head and emptying his lungs in a gusty sigh, Bruce put an arm around Steve’s waist and closed his eyes. It was always there, a milling, prowling cloud of paraetheric energy just under his skin, curled up in his chest. It had taken him more than a decade to gain enough control to even sense the shape of it, but extended exposure to Tony Stark and his propensity for unexpectedly poking people (really, just Bruce) with sharp objects had made that control imperative. He dug his fingernail into the hollow of his left hip, pushing into the spell inscribed on the bone.

Heat shot out from the spell circle, clicking off the metaphysical bindings on his beast one-by-one, _clack-clack-snap-pop_. He screamed into his teeth, hand curling convulsively around Steve’s hip. He was distantly aware of Steve’s surprise, the tension in his muscles, but it was far too late for that. Bruce felt a tooth crack, tasted blood. He dropped to one knee, dragging Steve down with him, and slapped the palm of his hand on the door. His tattoos erupted from his flesh all at once. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they glowed malevolent green. Beneath his knee, the door popped open and they dropped straight down while Bruce’s magic went haywire, tearing at the confines of his skin, growing too big for his body. Instead of dissipating through his skin or a spell, the energy simply took his human frailty and demanded that it keep up. He lost all sensation as they plummeted through the air, the rush of the wind indiscernible from the rush of his own pulse.

It was a horrifying kind of joy, shattering through every human limit and giving in to the lizard brain. The Hulk tore through the last barrier of Bruce’s fragile mind and oriented himself, spinning and flipping and twisting in the air.

A tiny body clung to his neck, whooping and shouting in primal joy. The Hulk grinned at the human and curled up to protect the more fragile body.

They landed together with the force of a comet, no different than dropping into water, sending a tidal wave of stone and debris in all direction. He roared defiantly at the fleeing humans, and it was glorious, magnificent sport, violence, and lust, and anger.

He roared again, forgetting about his human passenger until it dropped away from his neck and landed at his feet. He snarled and made a grab for the human, but the human was nimble and danced out of his way.

“Thanks for the ride!” it shouted up at him, nonsensical sounds, and then turned and ran.

The Hulk stamped his fists on the ground and pounded up a cloud of dust, shouting in furious indecision. He wanted to play with the human, but there were so many prey-humans. The prey-humans made up his mind for him, pelting him with tiny pieces of hot metal.

He hated it, he hated it, he hated it _so much_.

Thundering a roar, he swiped a hand through the crowd of prey-humans, knocking them around like so many pesky insects. More came from behind, and more still converged on his human passenger. The Hulk picked up a handful of prey-humans and threw them at the rest of their pack, shouting in triumph as they all went down in broken heaps.

Bigger pieces of metal impacted his side and he spun in annoyance at the stinging pain, quickly finding the source and yanking the metal tube and its prey-human attendant off of a wall. He flung the prey-human away and squished the tube into a tiny ball that he threw at the nearest building.

Smashing was his favorite, _favorite_ thing.

~*~

Steve got himself out the Hulk’s path in a hurry, dodging a grab and running up the wall of the miniature crater they’d created on impact. Even having felt the unassuming Dr. Banner transform right underneath him, Steve still found it hard to believe that one man could hold so much rage in his chest and not break apart. Still, there was something familiar and almost sweet about the protective about the way he’d curled his body to take the brunt of the impact and shield Steve from the fall.

A stream of black-clad men poured out of the outbuildings and Steve moved to intercept a group before they could flank him. Behind him, the Hulk thundered a terrible roar and pounded at the ground again with his fists, throwing rubble and bodies indiscriminately. Steve sensed a desperate fear in the men fighting him, and he didn’t blame them. The Hulk was ostensibly on his side and he was still itching to be as far away as he could manage.

Steve ducked instinctively and a wailing man flew over his head and crashed into his attackers, knocking them into a messy pile of curses and flailing limbs. Steve didn’t bother waiting for them to untangle themselves and took off at a dead run, searching for a convenient way into the largest building. The base was a mess of panicking men and women in the same dark clothing, none of them with the slightest idea of how to handle the Hulk, and the officers shouting themselves hoarse trying to get them in line. One young officer with a sharply pressed uniform and impeccably polished buttons grabbed Steve by one arm in all the madness and shouted orders up at him in German. Steve considered punching him in the face, but instead stopped to listen.

“And _get the asset out of the basement!”_ the officer concluded, shoving him in the direction of the main building. Steve gave him a jaunty two-fingered salute and took off again, smirking when the officer finally noticed that he wasn’t dressed correctly and started shrieking after him, yelling at whoever he could hold onto long enough to listen. Steve picked up the sounds of pursuit, but he was already leaping over the short stone wall running between the main building an outbuilding. A door flung open to one side of the main stairwell and Steve veered toward it with an extra burst of speed. He caught the first soldier across the face with his shield, and then swung it around to put the rim in the second soldier’s gut. A woman charged him with a pistol drawn, and he barely got the shield up in time to block a barrage of shots _crackcrackcrack,_ as fast as the handgun would fire. She clicked on an empty chamber and Steve punched her across one temple. He could clearly hear his school master’s outraged voice in the back of his head as the woman crumpled, unconscious, to the ground, but just on the heels of the old man’s strident voice came his mother’s reminder that women had been warriors just as long as men – and most of the time they were better at it. His mother had taught him to respect women, but she’d also taught him not to underestimate them.

He jumped over the woman’s prone body and darted to the side as a pair of young men down the hall opened fire. He charged them in a drunken, weaving path, using the walls like bumpers to launch off of, keeping his shield up between him and the two shooters. They were so shocked by his approach that they just stood their ground and fired off panicked round after panicked round. He bowled the first over with the shield, knocking him clean off his feet, and the caught the other on a backswing, sending him crashing into the wall. He heard the door scrape open, and a bullet chipped into the concrete. Steve flinched and swung around to meet his pursuers, backing up quickly at an angle to the wall. He slid into the intersecting corridor and turned to run, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the half-dozen Hydra agents.

Three armed soldiers turned the corner ahead of him, and Steve cocked his arm back and threw the shield without breaking step. It hit the first, clipped the second across the jaw. Steve lined himself up to catch it on the ricochet, scaling the wall to snag it before it hit the ceiling. He came down shield first on the last man, driving him into the floor next to his stunned compatriots. Steve was up and running before any of them recovered themselves. Getting a decent margin on them, Steve made a wild leap to the exposed pipes hanging down from the ceiling and slid around one nearly as thick as he was to hide. He held his breath as the agents went thundering past him, their numbers more than tripled since the last time he looked back to count.

Steve gave a slow three count to let them pass and then another five seconds just to take several long breaths. One straggler ran under him just as he was shifting to roll out of his hiding place and Steve froze to let him go. He was saddened by how many of them were impressionably young, most probably no more than twenty-five, and he didn’t want to kill them if he didn’t have to. It was a stupid sentiment, and these boys were no younger than the men he fought and killed during the War, but he didn’t want to see their faces when he crawled into his bunk that night.

Dropping to the floor on his nearly silent rubber soled boots, Steve quickly retraced his steps and darted down a corridor running the opposite direction to his pursuit. He moved as swiftly as he could while still maintaining some attempt at stealth. The rooms lining the hall were barracks with neatly made beds and a conspicuous lack of anything resembling personalization. It must have been a training facility with so many young people packed into small spaces. Steve grew quickly frustrated and started kicking doors open with less and less caution, stealth falling by the wayside as he searched for anything that would lead downward.

He came to the end of the hallway and kicked the last door open without much hope, turning away from it almost before it hit the opposite wall. His inattention saved his life. A thick crossbow bolt zipped through the air an inch from his ear, and would have gone straight through his left eye if he hadn’t turned away. Steve got the shield up in time to deflect another bolt, but he wasn’t balanced for the sledgehammer that crashed into it a moment later. He stumbled backwards, hit the wall, and kicked off of it. His attacker’s fist put a dent in the concrete wall and Steve realized that he didn’t have a weapon at all, the crossbow abandoned, and the heavy blows to his shield were barehanded. In the flickering overhead lights, Steve came face-to-face with the assassin of the night before. The lower half of his face was covered in a mask, and he was dressed the same way, black cloth swathed around his body from neck to ankle. His hair hung in greasy loose waves around his face, and his eyes were outlined in oily black. He had a feral look that made Steve’s shoulders tense uneasily.

Steve had barely a second to take in his appearance before the assassin smashed his right fist into the shield. Steve twisted with the blow, realizing his horrible mistake even as the assassin’s left fist swung around and hammered into his ribs. He barked out a startled curse and cut the shield over the man’s arm with enough force to shatter bone. His opponent was not even phased, turning with an alluring easy grace. Steve couldn’t make out the shape of his lips, but he had the impression that the assassin was grinning at him, that he was having fun as they traded blows that would have pulverized normal men.

A familiar whine caught Steve’s attention and he turned automatically, instinctively angling his shield to catch the beam of Tony’s repulsor and direct it at the assassin. The man hopped back in three easy leaps, and flipped over backwards, catching a pipe to change his direction and using the walls as springboards going down. He landed at Steve’s feet, fist aimed for the back of his knees. Steve leapt awkwardly out of the way, catching one wall with the toes of his left foot, and just barely managing to turn so that he landed on his side instead of flat on his back. The assassin kicked him in the gut hard enough to send him sliding backward several feet, and then launched at Tony, already charging his second repulsor. Tony caught him with a shot to the hip, but it barely slowed him down. The assassin landed a punishing blow to the center of Tony’s chest, and a second to the side of his head. Tony gasped in an alarmingly wet-sounding breath and Steve scrambled to his feet to catch him as he crumpled forward.

The assassin glanced back over his shoulder at them, but he didn’t stop running. Steve didn’t so much as shift to chase him, putting his back between Tony and the open corridor behind them. “Tony? Hey talk to me,” Steve pleaded, propping him up and resting Tony’s head on his shoulder. He was horribly limp in Steve’s arms, the armor clattering with every jostling movement. Steve had no idea how to get him out of it, or if he _could_ get him out of it, if it might not irreparably harm him to have pieces broken or removed.

“Tony, goddamnitall, wake up!”

When Tony still didn’t move, Steve grabbed the shield and threw it to his back. He lifted Tony in his arms, struggling to get a hold on the slick armor pieces. It would be easier if he could throw Tony over his shoulder, but it might hurt him more if he had a head injury.

“Did you just cuss?” Tony murmured as Steve turned into the corridor that would take them to the door.

Steve let out a loud sigh of relief, but he didn’t stop to put the other man down. He turned his back to the door and used the shield to shove it open. The light was dazzling after growing accustomed to the darkness inside the base, and Steve squinted against it, blinking rapidly.

“Okay, put me down,” Tony demanded, voice regaining some strength. Steve tightened his grip and Tony started to shift and squirm in his arms, shoving at the side of Steve’s face with one gauntleted hand. “Put me down, I’m fine!”

“Found yourself a princess, Cap?” Natasha purred to his left, seeming to materialize out of thin air.

Tony groaned. “Now look what you’ve done.” He went abruptly limp, and Steve, balanced for his struggling, lost his grip. Tony’s feet hit the ground and he pushed out of Steve’s arms, batting at him with both hands when Steve tried to steady him. “I’m fine. Just a little dazed, momma Cap, calm down.”

“Don’t you start that, too,” Steve warned, but he was so overwhelmed with relief to hear Tony’s voice that he would have consented to permanently changing his name to _Momma Cap_ if Tony asked him to at that moment. He held a hand out, but diverted at the last moment from grabbing his shoulder to curling his fingers around Tony’s bicep. He was gratified and relieved when Tony didn’t pull away from him.

Tony must have been more than just dazed because he didn’t have a comeback. He put one hand to his head and shook it slowly. “Man, that guy punches like an angry freight train.”

“Runs like one too,” Natasha added. “I barely even saw him go by before he was gone.”

“Bruce?” Tony asked, only the tilt of his head giving away that he was looking at her.

“Still green. Hawkeye is talking him down – he was pretty upset when he turned around and realized he didn’t have anyone else to smash.” She pointed to the far side of the compound and fell in step next to Tony, slipping under his arm like it was a friendly embrace instead of her helping him walk. Steve took careful note of the tactic. He didn’t think he could pull it off if Tony wasn’t in the armor, but they were almost of a height with the armor on.

Steve took several long steps to catch up and tried to replicate Natasha’s concealed assistance, slinging an arm around Tony’s waist. He wasn’t very good at that kind of subterfuge and both Tony and Natasha snorted in nearly identical sounds of amusement, but Tony put an arm over Steve’s shoulders, so it was worth it.

“Take it you didn’t find anything useful, Cap?” Tony asked.

“Didn’t have time to search. All I found were barracks and that augmented assassin. One of the officers told me that ‘the asset’ was in the basement. I need to get back in there.” Steve twisted to look over his shoulder.

“Hold on, cowboy,” Tony protested, tightening his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Just wait five minutes and we’ll get Bruce up topside for a nap, and _then_ we’ll clear the base together. Could be a dozen of those augmented assassins just waiting for you to stumble into them.”

Steve felt his cheeks go warm and decided not to relay how he’d found the first assassin. He shifted his grip on Tony’s waist to help him over a pile of rubble. They rounded the ruined edge of a concrete building and come on the scene of a massacre, the Hulk sitting petulantly in the middle of the mess of bodies and debris, his giant arms crossed over his chest as he glared down at Clint, standing fearlessly on his foot. Natasha glanced questioningly across Tony’s chest and Steve nodded, pulling Tony’s arm more securely over his shoulder, and she ducked out from under him.

Clearing his throat, Steve said, “Thank you,” into the charged silence. He glanced sideways at Tony – his head was turned toward Steve, but the blank mask of his faceplate was impossible to read. “For stepping in,” he clarified.

“Like you needed the help,” Tony replied with a derisive snort. He lifted his free hand and put it over the glowing circle in his chest. Steve wanted to reach up and touch it, but he kept his hands to himself. The only time he’d allowed himself to touch the puzzling construct was that first time in Tony’s cabin, his hand wrapping around it with the excuse that he was providing a buffer between it and Tony’s desk. He remembered the look on Tony’s face the first time he’d reached for it in London, and made himself not ask.

“Bucky was always coming to my rescue,” Steve blurted out. “When we were young, when I was still small and ready to fall over at the slightest breeze. I got into fights all the time, stupid fights, mostly ones I knew I couldn’t win. Bucky was always there to pick me up at the end.”

“I’m not ‘Bucky,’” Tony snarled with unexpected venom, trying to tug his arm away from Steve’s shoulder.

Steve held tighter. “I didn’t say you were,” he replied in as quiet and calm a voice as he could manage, but he didn’t understand the first thing about Tony sometimes. Just when he thought he was getting a handle on the man, Tony chucked a stone in the works. “I’m not trying to make you into a replacement,” he added with a kind of accidental clarity, “You’re not a stand in.”

Tony relaxed slowly against him, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he tipped his head toward where Natasha was having no better luck getting the Hulk to go back in the cage. She had her hand up, but the Hulk had scooted around so his back was to her. He peered at her over his shoulder and glared when she smiled.

“Time to call in the big guns,” Tony muttered, tugging Steve forward. “Hey, Green Fury!”

The Hulk hunkered down even further and put his hands over his ears. He made a chuffing sound like an annoyed cat.

“Alright, I’m going to go straight for bribery. Shed the green and you and me will take a weeklong vacation in Siberia. Just the two of us, how about it?” Tony cajoled.

The Hulk gave him a reluctantly interested look over one shoulder, musing over the offering.

“That’s all you’re gonna get out of me, you greedy brat. One week out with no civilization, and I’ll bring you lots of things to smash.”

Steve watched in wonder as the Hulk made a gruff sound of agreement and shifted around on his ass like a toddler. He bared his teeth at Steve and growled until Steve got the hint and let Tony go. The Hulk reached out and caught Tony in a surprisingly gentle grip, drawing him up to his face. He huffed a breath, shaking his shaggy head, and poked a finger at Tony’s chest.

“Just a scratch,” Tony reassured him. “Alright, you ready for warm cozies?”

The Hulk rolled his eyes unhappily, but then turned a loving gaze back to Tony, and just waited. Tony set a hand on his forehead.

“You can rest now, big guy,” Tony told him in a metered voice, not just words, but Words, dripping with power, “I’ll keep him safe.”

As Steve watched, the Hulk’s great eyes grew heavy. He cuddled Tony into his chest and flopped over sideways, curling around him. His breathing evened out, and he started to change. His tattoos became visible again, deep black marks as sharp as whiplashes, glowing gold. His skin lightened, muscles and bones pulling in so gradually that Steve almost missed the transformation even while his eyes never left the scene. In a matter of moments, Tony lay on his back with Bruce curled up against his shoulder, fast asleep.

“Way to go, boss,” Clint praised, waiting only long enough to make sure none of Bruce’s bones were still moving before stepping forward. “I’ll get him to his bed and come back down.” Clint picked Bruce up without even a grimace of strain, draping him over a shoulder. Bruce didn’t so much as twitch at the treatment.

Steve opened his mouth to add that Tony should go with them for an immediate checkup, but Tony didn’t give him the chance. He sat up and made a gesture to Steve. “First aid kit’s in the gig,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder after Clint’s retreating form.

He had the immediate impression that Tony was just giving him make work to keep him from charging back into the base on his own, but he went anyway. By the time he got back with the extensive first aid kit over his shoulder, Tony was propped up against a pile of rubble, the faceplate peeled back to show him pale-faced in the sunlight. Natasha knelt next to him, cleaning the blood out of his hair, their lips moving in the softest murmur of conversation. Steve probably could have focused on it if he wanted to, but he just cleared his throat to make sure they knew he was coming and dropped down on Tony’s other side.

They said nothing as Tony closed his eyes and let them clean and stitch the cut on the side of his head.

~*~

If ‘the asset’ had been Bucky, he was long gone by the time they made it back into the base and down the stairs to the basement. They found a slick staircase behind the door the assassin had come from, so it was equally possible that ‘the asset’ was the assassin himself. Steve wasn’t sure if was more upset over the idea that Bucky had never been on the base, or relieved to know that Steve hadn’t missed him by a matter of moments.

The basement room was rigged up more like a cell, with a set of heavy manacles on the wall, a thin bed in one corner, and a horrifying space attached, three feet-by-three feet that had no practical use that Steve could think of. Staring into the cubby, Steve felt a sick shiver pass down his spine. There was nothing specific to make him think so, but he knew with immediate certainty that it was an isolation chamber. Swallowing hard, he stepped into the space and pulled the door nearly shut. The only light was the thin wedge of the partially open door, and he could barely stand upright. If the door were closed, he would be hard pressed to even turn around, and sitting would be out of the question.

“Cozy,” Tony muttered as Steve stepped out of the tiny chamber.

Behind him, Rhodey had an unhappy, pinched look on his face. “Torture chamber,” he said, flicking a finger at the room. “Sensory deprivation. When the doors are closed, there’s no sound or light. Hydra uses them to break people.” His eyes were hard and flinty as he added, “Most of the time it works.”

Steve didn’t miss his eyes flicking to Tony, but Tony was aggressively ignoring the chamber in favor of the writing desk in the opposite corner. Steve frowned in concern. He wouldn’t have said anything there with Natasha and Rhodey poking around the room, but Rhodey caught his eyes and shook his head anyway. Steve let it go, one more piece of a puzzle that wasn’t leading to a happy picture when it came to Tony and Hydra.

“Nothing on Bucky,” Tony said, chewing on his lip as he flicked quickly through loose pages. He still had the armor on, but his gauntlets were peeled back to lay against his wrists, the angle unexpectedly disturbing, as the digits continued to twitch and curl. “But it looks like our violent friend spent some time in here at least.”

Steve glanced back at the door. They’d found three dead agents when they made it down the stairs, all signs painting a picture of the assassin being held captive by his own people. What they couldn’t tell was why. Steve moved to stand at Tony’s side, peering over his shoulder at the pages. It was all numbers and diagrams, math sharing space with music, and a completely incongruous sketch of a sketch of a small bird in one corner that tugged at Steve’s attention for a reason he couldn’t name.

“Could just be nonsense, could be code,” Tony said, shrugging. “Well, math is never _nonsense_ ,” he corrected, “But I need to spend some time with it to see if it connects to anything else, or if he was just doing it for fun.”

“Only you would think ‘doing it for fun’ belongs in the same sentence with ‘math,’” Natasha said dryly from across the room where she was crouched down to examine the cot. She picked up a reinforced band of chainmail and ran her finger along the groove of the attached cuff, her expression closed off.

“Hey,” Rhodey chastised, pointing a finger at her, “I still count prime numbers to fall asleep.”

“That’s because you’re a freak of nature, Rhodes,” she answered sweetly, whatever dark memory she’d been mulling over banished.  

Steve looked in between them, feeling once again lost, a stranger among friends. He turned away sharply, crouching down to open a drawer. He found a thick file inside and pulled it out, unwinding the string from the hook. Inside was a heavy package of photographs depicting the same three people – a painfully thin man in a thick jacket, a curvy woman with styled dark hair, and a willowy androgynous young woman in men’s clothing. He didn’t recognize any of them, but he spread them out on the desk for the others to look over. At the bottom of the file case was a misshapen, burnt coin with a hole punched in the middle.

Tony picked up one of the pictures. He made a soft clicking noise against his teeth. “Annemarie, what have you gotten yourself into?” he asked, handing it over to Rhodey.

“Berlin?” Rhodey guessed.

“Berlin,” Tony agreed. He turned to Steve, and though he made an effort to sound casual, Steve caught the sudden tension in him as he said, “Up to you, Cap. We can chase this guy to Berlin, see where that leads, or hit another base.”

Steve frowned, staring down at the pictures. “He’s going to kill these people,” he said, more to himself than anything.

“Maybe not,” Natasha answered, “He did escape – going after his next target might not be high on his priority list if he was being held against his will in the first place.” She shrugged. “Or he might be so well programmed that he doesn’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Steve said finally, “But I think he’s important. We should at least try to warn these people. You know who they are?”

“One of them,” Tony said with a nod. “We’ve at least got the speed advantage on him at the moment. He’ll be on the ground for a while at least. Let’s tear the rest of the base apart, see what else we can find.”


	8. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

He knew the taste of copper better than the taste of milk.

Slick on his hands. Sharp on his tongue. A world colored rust.

He ran his fingers through it. Liquid copper turned black on his gloves. Warm on his right hand. Molten on his left hand.

He stayed there when he should have left. The target had been neutralized. He should have left the corpse to bleed alone. He stayed with it. Watched its face. Felt its pulse stop. The target had been neutralized.

The salt on his lips was a new flavor.

He knew the taste of copper better than the taste of milk. 

~*~

They made slow progress through the choked streets of Berlin, cars and carts pushing down the street wheel-to-wheel, the city lit up in a multicolored swirl of activity. In his twenties, Tony had split his time between a loop of speakeasies stretching from Chicago to New York, and Berlin, a city steeped in color and sex. Its bright glow was tarnished by his long stay in a wet cave, the shadows more pronounced, but he still felt a warm place in his chest for Berlin. He watched the prostitutes as they rolled past, the streets lined with every description of flesh on sale. He couldn’t remember if it had always been that way, or if he’d just never noticed through the filter of cocaine and opium.

Tony leaned forward through the soft blue paraetheric curtain stretched between the driver’s bench and the backseat. Steve was a stiff, quiet presence beside him, staring out at the same streets with his eyebrows furrowed in a frown, lips pulled down.

“Happy, you said it was?”

Giving him a wide smile that matched his name, the driver nodded. “Yes, sir, Mr. Stark.”

“Whatever I’m paying you tonight, I’m going to double it,” Tony said, usually a guaranteed way to get a new employee’s attention.

“That’s not necessary, Mr. Stark. You’re already paying me very well.” He kept his eyes on the road, swerving beautifully around a slow moving cart.

Tony watched the man for several seconds. He was big, with a wide face and red cheeks, the smile lines etched deep into the space around his eyes for all that he looked like he was in his thirties. Tony had liked him from the moment he stepped out of the public aerospace terminal to find him holding a sign.

“Happy a family name, is it?” Tony asked, watching his face for a reaction.

If he was annoyed by what had to be a common question, he didn’t show it. “It’s Harold, Mr. Stark. Happy is a nick name from school that stuck.”

They rocketed around a tight turn, moving so fast that Steve pitched into Tony’s hip. Tony couldn’t hear Steve with his head past the privacy curtain, but he happily imagined him cursing in surprise. Tony reached back automatically to steady him, his fingers lingering at the base of Steve’s neck without his permission. Steve pulled away from him and Tony quickly withdrew his hand.

He cleared his throat. “You have an interesting accent, Happy.”

“My da’s Irish,” Happy explained, bringing the car to a smooth halt at an intersection so a short parade of people dressed up for the clubs could cross the street. “Came to Berlin for work, married my ma. Broke grammy’s heart, so he guessed the least he could do was teach me Gaelic growing up.”

Tony twisted around to look back at Steve. “Happy speaks your language, Capsicle.”

Steve blinked at him. “Capsicle?” he repeated.

“You missed the most important part of that statement, seriously, keep up.” Not waiting for Steve to respond, he pushed his head back through the curtain to tell Happy, “Steve speaks Gaelic even older than yours.”

“It’s not a language that changes much, sir,” he said without batting an eyelash.

“I like you, Happy,” Tony decided.

Happy smiled, pleased. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

“When you drop us off, I’d like you to go rent a hotel,” Tony said, reaching back to get his wallet and flicking through the cards there. He selected one with the information for his account at the Deutsche Bank. He slid the card into Happy’s breast pocket.

Happy glanced back at him. “A hotel room you mean? I thought you had reservations Hotel Adlon?”

Tony made a dismissive gesture. “Yes, but that’s not important. Just go rent a hotel – the whole thing, whatever rooms are available, for the next week. Drive back around and pick up as many of these lovely people as you can fit into the rooms.” He pointed out the window at the prostitutes lining the street.

“Should I tell them you’ll be entertaining?” Happy asked, easing them between two cars to get around a cart.

“No one will be entertaining,” he said, “Just pick them up, order food, and make sure they know they don’t have to do anything to earn it.” He winked at the man’s reflection. “And that’s why I’m doubling whatever I’m paying you tonight.” He would probably be tripling the pay, with all the trouble he was putting the man through, but Happy didn’t need to know that.

They pulled up to the first free space on the block surrounding the Resi cabaret. “Sure thing, Mr. Stark. Anything else?”

“No, thanks, Happy. Have a fun night – we’ll find our own way home.” He dropped back through the curtain, cutting off the chauffer’s protests and hustled Steve out of the back seat. Steve, looking like sex on two legs in a hastily fitted three piece suit in pinstripes, stood uncomfortably on the sidewalk. Tony could have taken Natasha or Clint with him to the cabaret to meet Annemarie, but he’d had Steve dressed up and in the car before he’d even put much thought into it. Maybe he just liked watching Steve squirm, or maybe he wanted to see how far Steve would let himself be pushed before he walked out of Tony’s cabin for good.

“Ready for a night on the town, my sweet, blushing captain?” Tony teased, looping his arm around Steve’s and invading his space in a single sidestep that brought their hips together.

Steve didn’t pull away from him, but he did give him a disapproving look. “This is serious, Tony. We’re putting ourselves in the path of a dangerous killer. We need to pay attention, not be off having fun.”

Tony let out a longsuffering sigh. “They’re not always mutually exclusive,” he said, taking his hand out of the crook of Steve’s elbow and slipping it under his jacket to nestle into Steve’s back pocket. Steve gave him a sideways look, and Tony thought that would be it, the moment he exploded and said whatever had been burning a hole in his stomach since Paris, but Steve just let out a long breath of his own and draped his arm over Tony’s shoulders.

They turned heads walking into the cabaret linked together. Tony stopped to admire the floor as the host found them a table. The Residenz-Casino had been one of his favorite haunts when Berlin was his stomping ground, the use of both mechanical and construct technology even more of a delight than the pleasures to be found at the tables. He still had over a dozen mementos from his Resi trysts.

“Why are there telephones on the tables?” Steve asked, doing his own examination of the room. He pointed one out to Tony. “And what are those pipes for?”

“The telephones are to contact other tables. A little anonymous flirting, arranging a private meeting, some dirty talk with a stranger. It’s all very risqué and fun. The ‘pipes’ are paraetherically powered pneumatic tubes so you can send notes and gifts to different tables. It’s a magnificent system of delivery – the tubes direct traffic by construct codes,” Tony explained, excited, “When you tell the system where the item is going, it imprints a tiny construct on it that works like a magnet, sending it zipping through the tubes to the matching construct at the other table. It’s fantastic engineering. I would be hard pressed to find improvements. I could do it, of course,” he said, scoffing at himself, “But it would take some thinking.”

Steve just stared at him, his expression a mixture of confusion and something perilously close to affection, but he looked impressed. Tony mused over it, confused himself by how quickly Steve swung from being irritated with him to that strange soft expression. 

“Sirs?”

“Tony?” Steve prompted when the host tried again, worry sneaking into his voice. He frowned and leaned down to peer into Tony’s eyes, maybe on the lookout for signs of brain trauma.

Waving away his concern, Tony followed the host to a table overlooking the dance floor. They settled in, Tony ordering wine and a decanter of scotch, and took in the atmosphere. The orchestra struck up a lively dance tune, a hundred mirrored balls floating over the floor, opening and closing in time to the music to fling shards of light around the room. The air was heavy with smoke and laughter, and Tony thought he’d missed it, but all the noise was already giving him a headache.

“Are you sure she’ll be here?” Steve asked over the general din, “Shouldn’t we look for her?”

Tony didn’t even get the chance to reply before the phone at the edge of the table started to ring. Giving Steve a rakish smile, he flicked the receiver off the base and lounged back into the padded booth. Setting the phone to his ear, he answered in French.

“What a nice catch you have, Mr. Stark,” Annemarie replied with a laugh. She had a smoky, rich voice that was always filled with strong currents of amusement, lust, or quick temper. “Have you come to show him off?”

“Maybe I have,” Tony purred, shifting in the seat until he was slouched against Steve’s side, one hand sliding under the table to cup his knee. Steve made a noise half way between surprise and confusion, but he angled his body so Tony’s head fell to his chest instead of his shoulder. “What sort of trouble have you been getting yourself into, my dark darling?” Tony asked, eyes running casually over the tables with a direct line of sight to his own. He caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, hair longer than he remembered and done up in curls.

“I’m always in at least three kinds of trouble,” she replied blithely. “Look up to your left, dear.”

“I saw.” Tony made a production of getting himself comfortable in the seat, ending up more than half in Steve’s lap. Steve held still until he was settled, and then arranged his arm over Tony’s chest, his opposite elbow brace on the table for balance. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that was too regular not to be intentional. Tony craned his head back to look up at him, taking in Steve’s bemused expression with a grin and a wink.

“Quite a big fellow, isn’t he?” Annemarie observed, her voice dripping with sex appeal.

“Oh, you have no idea how big,” Tony replied cheerfully.

“Tony,” Steve protested weakly, but he shifted his weight beneath Tony’s back in a universal shuffle of unintended arousal in a public place.

Tony considered him while Annemarie worked her effective charm in his ear. Giving him a wicked look, Tony picked up Steve’s hand and bit down on the knuckle of his first finger. Steve’s expression closed down immediately, eyebrows and lips relaxing, eyes unreadable and dark.

“Oh, he likes you,” Annemarie said with a chuckle.

“I think you might be wrong, darling,” Tony mused in response while Steve’s eyes bored holes into his forehead. Tony remembered the playful smile on Steve’s face when he’d dragged his tongue over his fingers in bed, and couldn’t guess at what the blank mask could mean.

“Trust me, my little avocado pit, he’s enjoying himself.”

“Maybe we should tell her about the assassin?” Steve murmured, quirking one eyebrow in a question, but he didn’t pull his hand away as Tony flicked his tongue over his knuckle.

“Tell your friend to speak up, dear, he sounds like he has a lovely voice.”

Tony finally released Steve’s finger and tilted his head so he could see her leaning over her phone, slender fingers wrapped around the stem of a long cigarette filter. “Come visit with us,” Tony suggested, gesturing her down. Steve held his hand stiffly at Tony’s collarbone, his damp finger cocked as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Tony reached up and wiped the moisture away with a roll of his thumb and forefinger without looking away from Annemarie.

“I don’t know,” she said after a long drag on her cigarette, “I like the view from up here just fine.”

“If it’s good from way up there, imagine what it would be like up close,” Tony argued.

She laughed at him, tapping her cigarette into the ashtray. “You are a terrible tease, Mr. Stark. It’s not a very nice thing you’ve done to your friend, ignoring him to invite over other company.”

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but Steve unexpectedly snagged the phone from him. “We make better company together, ma’am. We’d be happy to have you join us.”

Tony heard her startled laugh from the table, echoed through the phone. He twisted to get the phone in between them, blatantly draping a leg over Steve’s thigh and resting his head on Steve’s broad shoulder. Almost absently, Steve caught his hand and ran his thumb over Tony’s wrist in a tiny circle that had a disproportionate effect on Tony’s senses. Shivers ran up his arm and the thin skin of his wrist seemed to catch on fire.

“He’s got you hooked, hasn’t he, pet?” Annemarie asked lowly, “You make a pretty pair. Tell me how he keeps you occupied in that lonely cabin of yours. Has he found the false bottom in your drawer yet?”

“You’re giving away all my secrets,” Tony protested, but he felt Steve’s attention flicker like a physical thing and glanced over at him. “He wouldn’t want to know about the fun things I keep in _that_ drawer.” He grinned, lips curling into the smile that won him lovers and enemies in equal measure, winking up at Steve.

“Careful about baiting the lion, dearest. He looks like he could hold you down.”

“He has held me down,” Tony replied wickedly, holding Steve’s gaze and daring him to deny it, to walk away. “Held me down right over that desk with the false bottom in the drawer. I made him a mirror so he could watch his own body above me-”

“So I could see the way your face flushed when I put my hands on your hips,” Steve corrected in a voice just barely above a growl, dangerous, and dark. “So I could make you watch yourself under me.”

Tony’s jaw went slack and he blinked up at Steve, startled and instantly turned on, and easily as confused as he was turned on. Steve’s arm closed around him, his eyes flinty, pupils blown to swallow the blue of his irises. Tony couldn’t tell if Steve was more furious or aroused, and he wasn’t sure he cared which. He wanted to be away from all the people, the flashing lights, the blaring trumpet; he wanted the safety of his cabin, the freedom to strip Steve bare and stretch him out on the floor like a specimen on display.

“Do go on, gorgeous man,” Annemarie invited after a pause for a slow drag on her cigarette, “Did he make a good host?”

“Not at all,” Steve answered. “We ended up on the floor, and I left with my clothing a mess.” His hand tightened on Tony’s wrist until he could feel his pulse straining around the pressure, and the phantom of Steve’s heartbeat against his skin.

“That wasn’t very considerate of you, sweetpea. I thought I taught you better than that.”

Tony recovered enough of himself to suggest, “Maybe I need another lesson.”

“The pleasure of your company would be just fine,” Steve interrupted before Annemarie could accept or decline the invitation. His voice was possessive in a way that made Tony’s hackles rise immediately.

Eyes narrowed, Tony said, “Yes, darling, your company always was _pleasurable_.”

Steve made a frustrated noise. “Maybe you can give me a few tips on handling smart-mouthed engineers who’ve no’ a lick o’ sense in their grea’ big heads.”

Annemarie chuckled into the line. “What a lovely lilt you’ve been hiding, my mighty Irish lion,” she said as Tony and Steve glared at each over a distance of a few electric inches. “I’ve always found that the smart-mouthed ones do best when their mouths are occupied.”

Steve didn’t even let her finish before closing his hand on Tony’s jaw and holding him still for a bruising kiss that was at least as much punishment as passion. Tony bit his lip in retaliation and Steve jerked back, blood welling up to give him a feral aspect that suited him just as well as the wholesome All-American Hero he was presented as in the history books.

“Be nice, boys,” Annemarie chided, and then laughed as she added, “Don’t make me separate you two.”

Her intrusion knocked just enough fight out of Steve that he let Tony’s jaw go and shifted backward to put some space between them. His chest rose and fell in harsh, angry pants, and his brows were pulled together so tightly that his eyes were nearly lost in the shadow of them. Tony watched him struggle for control and he wanted to poke at him, prod at all his buttons until the control came undone and Tony could figure out how he worked underneath, what made him tick. He didn’t even care that they were in public – it would be a hell of a show.

Steve pulled his eyes away from Tony, took a slow breath, and put the phone up to his ear. “I apologize,” he said, his accent once again smoothed out to just the slightest hint of blunting on the hard sounds. “We have news for you, and I would personally appreciate it if you would join us for a moment. It’s a matter of your safety.”

“Spoilsport,” Tony pouted. Steve darted a furious look at him. Tony responded by jerking his lips up to flash his teeth.

Tony couldn’t hear Annemarie’s reply, but she set her phone down, picked up her martini, and made causal progress across the room to join them. Her eyes glittered with amusement as she slid into the booth.

“Are you sure my safety is what we should be concerned about?” she asked, her voice light and sweet, but Tony heard the hard undercurrent as she flicked her eyes to him. He shook his head in mute response and glanced over to see Steve looking absolutely devastated by the implication. The change in his expression was so profound that Tony reached over to poke him in the ribs.

“This one is a big fluffy kitten of Justice and Freedom,” he said cheerfully. Steve winced, lips pulled into a distasteful frown.

Annemarie accepted the assessment with a slight incline to her head. “What was so pressing to draw you back to Berlin when you’ve been gone all these years, pet?”

Tony stood and slid in to the other side of the booth, nudging Annemarie further into the center. He fitted himself close to her side, briefly overwhelmed with an unexpected wave of nostalgia. She’d taken him under her wing when he stumbled into Berlin with more money than sense, and he’d thought himself madly in love with her. _I love you, dear, sweet thing_ , she’d said, _but I could never love the way you want, I could never be yours alone_. In the years since they’d last touched, he’d forgotten that the best part of making love to her was curling up with his head over her heart in the aftermath. The scent of her rose perfume knocked briefly sideways into those lazy afternoons of drugs and lovemaking, and he jerked when she put a hand on his thigh to get his attention.

“You’re not taking good care of yourself,” she said gently, large brown eyes warm with affection and concern.

Tony made himself smile. “Enough about me,” he announced, “We’re here about you.”

When Tony didn’t continue, Steve explained, “We’ve been tracking a very dangerous assassin since Paris. We believe you are one of his next targets.”

The announcement had worryingly little impact on Annemarie. She took a drag of her nearly exhausted cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs, and then blew it up toward the ceiling. “Which one?” she asked finally, cherry red lips curled in a dark smile.

Tony frowned. “Which _one_? What kind of trouble are you in? Why didn’t you contact me?”

She shrugged. “What good would it have done? You have your life and your troubles, and they’re much bigger than me,” she said without the slightest hint of bitterness or judgement. “The Nazis came into our city and spewed their poison around like sick children, vomiting wherever it pleases them. They make elite fighting units out of their soldiers who will form magical bonds, claim that they are superior to all men, that their bond proves their magic more pure, closer to the gods. Of any magic user who bonds without giving their life to the Führer and his mad quest, they say are traitors. Of any non-magic user who chooses a lifestyle not that of the dutiful husband and wife, they say are tainted.”  

Annemarie stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray with more violence than her voice gave away. She flashed a fierce, dark smile at Steve. “I call a fire a fire, a goat a goat. I will not be quiet, and so I am an enemy of their party. I dispose of at least one would-be assassin before I even get dressed in the morning.” 

Tony could see the moment that Steve’s regard tipped over and he decided that he liked Annemarie. He snorted – she would be just the crazy sort Steve would love, too small for every fight she’d ever picked, and somehow she’s still walked away from the scrapes.

“So tell me,” she invited smoothly, “Why I should find your boogey man so scary?”

~*~

The light made him think of fire.

It was not a destroying fire. He sat still on the opposite roof to watch the target move through the apartment. It was not a high risk target. He had his intel. He should have moved hours before. He sat on the roof to watch.

The blood was still wet on his clothing. Dry on his skin. His lips tasted like salt.

Three points of entry. Possible complications: the window one floor down was open, the target’s location was visible from the street, the street was well lit, it was quiet and any screams would carry. The target had injected itself with clear liquid two hours before. It was vulnerable. He should have moved then.

He sat on the roof to watch. He thought of fire.

Intel indicated that the target would be alone. He cocked his head to watch two unknowns approach the target’s location. Female: 170 centimeters. Movement indicates combat training. Male: 188 centimeters. Movement indicates combat training. Both subjects armed.

He should have moved then. Estimated time to eliminate target: 12.7 seconds. Estimated arrival of unknowns: 130 seconds.

He sat on the roof to watch, and thought of fire. He almost remembered what it meant to be warm.

~*~

Natasha was prepared to charm herself into the stranger’s home. If that didn’t work, she was just going to step aside and let Clint throw a bag over his head. She knocked on the door, put on her most charming smile, and tilted her chin down so she would be looking up through her lashes.

The door opened, but before she could say a word, the man grunted and turned away. He shuffled through the small living room and dropped onto the sagging couch, leaving the door open. Natasha glanced over to Clint, shrugged, and stepped inside. Her eyes moved in practiced paths over the small space. Exits: window facing street, window facing alley, door; vulnerabilities: two open windows, cluttered walking spaces, open flame at the stove, single light fixture, cramped quarters, clothing and blankets on the floor, carpet curling up; weapons: fire poker, broom, scissors on side table, clothing and blankets on the floor, hot teakettle (steam rising from the spout), books, bookcase, letter opener.

She completed her assessment in the space of three steps and offered the painfully thin man on the couch a smile. “Herr Landau?”

He turned watery blue eyes up to her, chewing on his bottom lip with yellow teeth, walking his eyes casually over her body. “If you wanted to seduce your way into my home, miss,” he said in English, “You should have put him out in front.” He gestured to Clint with one finger, and smiled. “Didn’t Tony tell you?”

“Tony contacted you?” Clint asked, annoyed and trying to hide it. Tony had told them that he didn’t know the other two targets, and they’d had to track them down by the context clues in the surveillance photos.

Landau gave her a wide, infectious smile. He tapped a finger under one eye and said, “Oh, we’ve never met.” He shifted on the couch, tugging his threadbare robe across his lap and flicking through the mess on his end table. He found a cigarette amidst the debris of paper shreds, butts, a leather strap, and a hypodermic needle. Lighting it, he turned back to them. “What can I do for two such lovely people this evening?”

Natasha gestured questioning to the chair against the wall. It was stacked with four battered books, a messy stack of photographs, and a serving tray with a half-eaten sandwich on a chipped plate. He waved a hand at her, pulling hard on the cigarette and filling his cheeks with smock. “Put it anywhere,” he said, wheezing as he released a cloud to be whisked out the open window.

Moving the items to the floor, and pushing them as far out of what little space was available, Natasha brought the chair over and sat it opposite the coffee table. Clint moved quietly behind her, positioning himself so he could see all three exits. Landau’s eyes watched him picking his way around piles of clutter, but Clint kept his movements professional, gaze constantly moving.

“You seem already well-informed, Herr Landau. Do you know why we’re here?” Natasha asked, smiling to get his attention. She put her shoulders against the back of the chair, resting her hands lightly in her lap.

“Well,” Landau mused, “I suppose if you were Nazis, you’d be here to kill me, wouldn’t you?” He smiled back at her with a generous dose of amusement. “I guess you’re not Nazis, though.”

Shaking her head, Natasha confirmed, “No, we’re not Nazis.”

“I saw you coming,” he said, “I saw you with the tall blond fellow, _Tony_ , he said to the other one with the sad eyes. I saw you with pictures of me… Mallory… Annemarie. Are they dead, Mal and Annie?” He flicked a long tube of ash in the general direction of the window, getting it mostly on the back of the couch.

“Our friends are checking on them now. Do you realize that you’re in danger?”

He snorted. “Haven’t you seen all the Nazis with their big puffed chests and their shiny boots? I am always in danger, young lady.” His eyes were alight with keen understanding and mischief as he added, “You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

“Can we close the windows, Mr. Landau?” Clint broke in, interrupting the Seer before he could delve into Natasha’s head.

“No,” Landau answered without a second’s hesitation. “If they’re going to kill me, they might as well do it in a cold breeze.”

Natasha didn’t respond for a moment, considering him. True Seers were rare, and Science still hadn’t come up with an explanation for their existence. Tony refused to believe they existed at all, calling them fantastic con artists, observant geniuses of body language and tells. Natasha had never met one before, but Karl Landau made the back of her neck prickle. She wiped her mind blank, breathing smoothly and evenly, imagining herself walking down a spiral staircase that came from nowhere and led into nothing.

Landau laughed. “I can’t read your mind, girl. And that wasn’t me reading you thinking that I was reading your mind.” He waggled a finger at her. “I just know the look. Everyone, every _thing_ exists in the same weave of energy. I just happen to be able to pull threads closer and look at them.”

“How did you know to look at us?” Natasha asked curiously, tilting her head.

He shrugged. “I didn’t. You were looking for me. It creates a kind of resonance.” He glanced behind him through the window, eyes focused, but looking at nothing that Natasha could see. “Mallory is gone, sweet duck. Annemarie is keeping your friends company.”

Natasha exchanged a glance with Clint. She looked back at Landau and asked, “Why do the Nazis want you dead? No offense, but you seem like a useful kind of guy to keep chained up in a basement.”

He laughed again, loudly, obviously startled. He had a peculiar braying laugh, and shortly began to cough and choke on it. He fell into a brief coughing fit, fumbling a yellowed square of fabric out of his robe’s pocket to hold over his mouth. He shook faintly when he finally calmed enough to look back up. Yellow phlegm and black blood speckled his lips in the wake of the fit, and he wiped at them wearily. Clint poured him a glass of water from the pitcher on the kitchen counter and handed it over.

“Thank you, gorgeous.” Landau winked at Clint, and added, “You can come join me on the couch if you like.”

“If it’s all the same, I’ll stay where I can see the windows,” Clint answered politely, but he smiled. Natasha smirked at him – he was always on his best behavior when they were working, but she wondered what ridiculous things he would have done if they weren’t on a mission. He’d gotten reckless with his personal space since Coulson had tried to bury him in the operative-wasteland of babysitting scientists at a secure facility, and he had a baffling need to make strangers smile.

“To answer your question, young miss,” Landau said after taking several sips and setting the glass back down, “I am no good to the Nazis. My mother was Jewish. I am a queer sorcerer who can form magical bonds, but won’t. One day soon, maybe they will burn me in the square along with my books.” He looked out the window again, attention wandering. “Won’t that be a sight?”

“We have an airship docked at the aeroport,” Natasha said, “We can get you out of the city, take you wherever you’d like to go.”

He waved his hand again. “I’m too sick, too set in my ways, and I don’t want to live enough to put the effort into starting over again.”

Natasha privately thought that he made a poor choice for a political assassination with that attitude, but there was something about him that she liked, a certain pragmatism.

“I wasn’t always such a waste of magic and talent,” he confided. He pointed at a painting half-hidden by a stack of books. Clint picked it up and turned it so Natasha could see the portrait of a vitally alive young Landau, eyes painted a shade of blue so bright it could have only been achieved with enchanted pigments. He had a fierce smile on his face, and a full head of dark curls. “That was the last one Hans painted before he died, only a decade ago.”

His voice was soft with memory and affection. “So, you see, I meant something to someone once. I help the people I can in the city, and I throw rotten apple cores at passing Nazis. It’s enough for me.” He stubbed out the cigarette on the bottom of his slipper. “Annemarie won’t leave with you either. Neither would Mallory. It’s a shame about her, she really was the most hopeful of us.” He shrugged and pulled himself to his feet. “Since you’re here, the least I can do is feed you. Come, sit with me.”

Natasha stood to follow Landau into the tiny kitchen area, little more than a cubby set with a wide water basin, a stove, and several cupboards. She stood in the doorway, angling her body so she could keep an eye on both Landau and the living room as he shuffled around the small space, pulling out mismatched crockery.

“You would have loved Berlin ten years ago,” Landau said over his shoulder. “Had you ever been?”

“Once,” Natasha said without meaning to, unintentionally honest. She blinked, but continued, “I’m afraid it wasn’t a pleasure trip.”  

“Sorry to hear that,” Landau replied, his eyes briefly sharpening on her face as if he knew the dirty business that had brought her to Berlin twelve years before. “It was a wonderful place, a true metropolis of art and free expression.”

He continued on an entertaining monologue of the city’s delight, sprinkled liberally with mentions of ‘Hans’ and ‘the girls.’ Natasha didn’t ask for details. He wanted to reminisce to an interested audience, not dredge up the darker details, and Natasha was very good at being the interested audience.

Landau was just setting a plate of bread on the table when Natasha caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Clint cussed, startled, and Natasha moved immediately to block the kitchen with her body. They both had weapons trained at the window in moments, but the dark-clad assassin didn’t move. He crouched on the sill, silent and so still that he could have been a shadow except for his eyes, bright in the dark mask of his face. He watched them with unblinking attention, head tipped like a bird.

“Have you come for me, too, friend?” Landau asked from over Natasha’s shoulder. He pushed past her, and Natasha reached out immediately to grab him, Clint throwing up his free arm to bar his progress.

“Herr Landau-”

“Don’t be rude, young lady,” Landau said, but his eyes were full of delight when he looked back at her. “He’s been watching me all night. He could have taken me hours ago, and you would have found only a corpse.” He slid out of his robe to evade Natasha’s grip and pushed Clint’s arm gently out of his way.

“Mr. Landau, please come back from the window,” Clint tried. The moved slowly, easing out along the walls to keep their shooting lines clear. The assassin’s eyes flicked once to her, once to Clint. He didn’t move, balanced easily on the narrow sill with his hands plainly visible.

“You stayed with her, didn’t you? Mallory. You stayed with her when she died. I appreciate that, you know. She didn’t deserve to die alone.”

“She didn’t deserve to die at all,” Clint hissed. He stumbled over a stack of books and stepped over them without looking down. “You need to leave.”

Ignoring Clint entirely, the assassin watched Landau with rapt attention. Landau held out a hand to him. He hesitated, staring at the Seer’s bony fingers. Moving slowly, he lifted his left hand and set a single finger in Landau’s palm.

“You’re very lost, my friend,” Landau said sadly. “Very alone. Won’t you come down and sit with me? We’re going to eat some dinner. It is simple, but good, and there’s plenty.”

The assassin looked between the three of them and withdrew his hand. He examined his finger curiously, and then wiped it across his eye. It was only then that Natasha realized he was weeping.

Looking once more between them, he shifted on the window sill, moving his weight backwards. Natasha darted forward and made a grab for him, but she barely felt the brush of her fingers on his belt as he dropped straight down to the first floor balcony. He hopped over the rail to the street without the slightest sign of discomfort from the long fall. He looked up at her for half a second, the angle drawing his hair away from his face. What little was visible of it looked pale in the moonlight. After a moment, he turned and ran, disappearing quickly in the shadows.

“Did you just invite the guy who was here to kill you in for dinner?” Clint asked incredulously.

Landau sighed. His face was sad when Natasha turned to look at him, but he summoned a smile. “It seemed like the polite thing to do.”

~*~

“We should have walked her home,” Steve said stubbornly, following Tony into the suite he’d rented earlier in the day. He’d been tense and unhappy since leaving The Resi without Annemarie, and then furious when Tony had refused to go against her wishes and follow her home.

“She would have carved your balls off with her compact before she even stopped to ask why you were stalking her.” He could have made Steve feel better by telling him that he’d hired a dozen men to lurk on her block for the next month, and at least two of them were going to stay on permanently after that, but he liked having Steve riled up. He threw himself onto one of the classy white couches and crossed his right leg over his left, watching Steve pace an angry line from one side of the sitting room to the other.

“She was your lover, wasn’t she?” he demanded, rounding on Tony with an accusatory look.

Tony reared back. He glared up at Steve, hands tightening on the back of the couch. “ _Lover_ is too tame of a word,” he said nastily, pleased when Steve flushed in obvious anger and irritation.

“Then why aren’t you more worried about her safety? That assassin is out there hunting for her, and we just let her walk home alone? If you don’t want to go, tell me where she lives, and I will.”

He’d meant to keep his cool for the inevitable blow-out over the last several days of tension, but Tony couldn’t stop himself from surging to his feet. He crossed the sitting room in four fast strides and shoved two fingers hard into Steve’s sternum. “Not everyone falls down to worship at the altar of Captain America!”

Steve shoved his hand away and leaned back, eyes wide, and entire body flinching like he’d been hit. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

Tony felt instantly, immediately trapped. He heard his dad’s drunken sermons on Captain America: Everything You Are Not playing on a sudden loop, praying to the portrait over his bed because he’d really thought that Captain America was Jesus until he was eight, and even after he’d been set straight by the belt across his back, closed his eyes at night wishing that Captain America would come and save him. Steve wasn’t _him_ , and hadn’t been him since the first time he’d opened his mouth and proved he was _real_ , but, God, it was right there, just ready to pour out of Tony’s mouth and ruin everything. 

He sucked in a shuddering breath and made his voice hard as he shoved away the whole mess of his childhood and snarled, “You sure seem to think you have the right to judge everyone else’s choices.” He refused to back away from Steve even though the proximity made his pulse trip.

“What is that even supposed to _mean_?” Steve threw his hands up and took a step back, turning a tight circle. “What is so wrong with me caring about people and their welfare? About you? That’s what this is about, right? It all comes back to you!” He pointed a finger at Tony’s face, hovering just an inch from his nose. 

“Yes,” Tony said, narrowing his eyes. He had a sudden impulse to just bite Steve’s finger, the same one he’d been sucking on at the table. Turning sharply, he swiped a glass off the side table and sloshed a measure of amber liquor into it to keep from crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m the center of the universe, hadn’t you heard?” he asked, managing to get his voice back under control, low and smooth to mask the anger and the hurt. It shouldn’t hurt anyway, not anymore, not from someone he’d really only known for less than a month in a total.

“You-!” Steve formed angry fists with his hands, stopped himself, and made a quick retreat to the opposite side of the room to face the wall. He ran a hand roughly through his hair, yanking out the elastic. Drawing in a deep breath, he turned back around with his hair hanging loose over his shoulders. His voice was tight and sharp when he continued, “You are maddening! What are we arguing about? Because we’ve been doing it for days, and I don’t even know.”

Tony snorted. “Fucking is almost never a bad idea,” he said, mostly to himself, and then raised his voice to add, “But maybe fucking _you_ was a bad idea with all your goddamned Catholic guilt.”

Steve just stared at him, slack jawed, speechless.

If anything, Steve’s shock just made him angrier. Tony swallowed the cognac in one shot, the sweet liquor making him wrinkle his nose. He slammed the glass back down. “I am not your _boyfriend_ , Rogers, and I’m not your wife. I’m not going to sit at home and darn your socks while you work, and welcome to the twentieth fucking century, by the way, where you don’t own me just because I let you bend me over!” His words hung in the silence like sharpened knives, and Tony wanted to take them back before they turned around to cut him instead, but they were already in the air.

Steve stared at him, the muscles in his neck straining with temper. “Anything else?” he asked tensely, eyes narrowed, hectic color staining his cheeks.

He looked really… really _good_ , an angry mess with his hair wild, his chest rising and falling in deep, deliberate breaths. Tony didn’t know what it said about him that he wanted to suck Steve off while he trembled in anger, one hand fisted tight in Tony’s hair. It wasn’t the time, and that was exactly what lead to them fighting in the first place, but the Turkish rug looked like a nice place for his knees. He picked up another decanter and sniffed it before pouring the whiskey. He focused on his hands so they would stop shaking, suppressing the burn at the base of his spine that was the armor, brought to the surface by the confusing jumble of strong emotions. He drew in breaths through his nose until he felt the tattoos slip back under his skin.

“I am not going to stop flirting with other people, or ask your permission to dance, or stop throwing wild parties where all my guests get drunk and fuck on the stairs like mad bunnies.” He took a slow sip of the whiskey, letting it burn through his chest. “And if you can’t deal with that, you need to walk away as soon as we find your friend.”

Steve took that all in, his expression relaxing slowly. “First,” he said after waiting a moment for Tony to continue, “My mother was a Druid, not a Catholic.”

Off-footed, Tony just blinked at him for several seconds. He opened his mouth twice to speak, but his tongue got caught somewhere around _a Druid, are you joking?_ And _Do you know any sex rituals?_

“Second,” Steve said slowly, “I don’t care if you want to flirt, or dance, or walk around in nothing but your skin. I know you don’t owe me anything just because ‘ _you let me bend you over_.’” He took in another slow breath. “And for the record, I wouldn’t let you near my socks even if you _wanted_ to darn them.”

Confused, Tony blurted, “Then what the hell have you been so upset about?”

Steve made a frustrated noise that bordered on being a whine. “You’re like a different person half the time, Tony! When I first woke up, you were distant and foul-tempered as a winter storm, and then I spent nine months getting to know your handwriting, and you were fun, quick-witted… just full of so much energy and life.  That’s the Tony I made friends with, the one I took to bed.” He scrubbed his hair back from his face and put it up in a messy bun with distracted inattention, eyebrows crinkled, lips pulled into a frown. When he brought his chin back up, Tony was frozen solid by the lost look on his face. “The Tony I saw at that party was… not the person I’ve gotten to know, and I just don’t which you is real. Do I even know you at all?”

“Yes,” Tony choked out without meaning to. He cleared his throat and took a drink to cover up the noise, backing away when Steve took a step toward him. Steve stopped moving, and Tony stared at his collarbone. He pursed his lips, weighed the risks of letting Steve too close, and said, “Yes, you do.”

Steve opened his mouth to speak, but the door flew open to spill Clint into the room. He didn’t even look at them as he stalked right past Steve and grabbed the glass out of Tony’s hand. He drained it while Tony watched with one eyebrow raised, not sure if he was more annoyed at the interruption, or grateful that he didn’t have to answer Steve’s next question.

“You’re overreacting,” Natasha commented calmly as she trailed behind him. She closed the door and glanced between Tony and Steve, noticing the tension immediately, because she was some kind of sniffing hound for those kinds of things. She quirked an eyebrow at him, and Tony shook his head mutely.

“How did he sneak up on us?” Clint demanded, “And what the hell was he doing just sitting outside that guy’s window _for hours_? What was the point?”

Steve’s expression, up to that point falling solidly in the _annoyed_ column, shifted immediately to concern. His eyes flickered over them quickly, checking for injuries, bandages, blood. Tony knew the path of his eyes, because his own followed the same route. Clint sniffed each of the decanters until he found the whiskey and filled the glass up again. He took a healthy swallow and handed it back.

“What happened out there? Is Mr. Landau alright?”

Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, shifting to rest her weight on one hip. She nodded. “He’s fine.” Her gaze darting to Tony, “And someone you probably want to meet some day.”

Tony’s interest was immediately piqued, but he held down the rush of questions until they finished their report.

“Weird guy, but nice. Crazy,” Clint clarified, “But nice. We’re listening to him talk about the good old days, and I’m starring right out at the living room _the entire time_ , and suddenly that guy is just _there_ in the window like an oversized crow! He’s not human!”

“You fought the assassin?” Steve guessed anxiously, so endearingly worried that Tony couldn’t believe how angry he’d been just minutes before. He felt guilty and foolish for arguing about their undefined relationship when Clint and Natasha were facing off with a dangerous enemy.

“That’s the strangest part,” Clint said, shaking his head, “Landau actually invited him in for dinner! And he just sat there for a second, and then jumped back out the window and ran off.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’s afraid of leek soup?”

“He just ran away?” Tony clarified, but it made a strange kind of sense. In every encounter, he’d run as soon as he came upon any resistance. Maybe whatever his mission was, it didn’t involve making a scene.

“Not before I tagged him,” Natasha said, her lips curling in a slow smile. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of tiny pieces of paper. Tony almost kissed her, but she lifted an eyebrow and he backed away with his hands held up.  Each of the tiny shreds of paper represented hours of work, revolutionary tracking constructs, designed to attach to nearly any surface and remain invisible and nearly untraceable for days. Steve, frowning in confusion, leaned over Natasha’s shoulder and picked one up. He arched an eyebrow at Tony in askance, but didn’t look anywhere near impressed enough when Tony explained what they were.

“I couldn’t get to his skin,” she said regretfully, sliding the constructs back into her pocket, “So if he ditches his belt, we’re back to square one.” She glanced around the room again, as if there was anything she might have missed on the first pass. “Any word from Rhodey?”

“We were the first ones back,” Steve said, shaking his head.

Natasha reached into her other pocket and pulled out her communications mirror. She pressed her thumb to the back to activate it, and then traced a quick pattern over the front. They all waited while the mirror turned a murky opaque white, and then darkened. She tapped her fingernail on the surface. On Rhodey’s side, it would translate to a clicking noise that had less of a chance of giving him away if he couldn’t talk.

“Where the hell have you guys been?” Rhodey demanded angrily as soon as the mirrors connected, his voice too small to contain all the worry and anger Tony picked up on immediately. “I’ve been trying to raise one of you for almost twenty minutes!”

“What’s your status?” Natasha asked instead of answering.

“Oh, I’m fine. Wish I could say the say the same for Mallory Olsen. Dead when I got here, cold. Must have bled out hours ago. You?”

“Herr Landau is fine,” she glanced up briefly at Tony, but barely waited for him to nod before reporting, “Same for Annemarie. Come back to the hotel – we’ve got a tracker on our mark, and I’ll fill you in.”

“On my way,” Rhodey replied.

Clint’s expression was troubled as muttered, “He knew she was dead.”

~*~

_Where am I?_

Be quiet, they’ll hear you.

_Why I am still alive?_

Lie still.

_I’ve been out too long. They’ll wipe me._

You can’t fight them. He’ll kill you.

 _They’ll wipe me_.

You’ve been out too long. You’re stronger this time. Just wait.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is possible my favorite thing I've ever written!

**Chapter Eight**

Relying strictly on Tony’s instruments made him itch. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Tony’s engineering, he just didn’t like being blind.

Rhodey curled his fingers around the wheel and tapped the power thrumming through Tony’s constructs. They tickled his fingertips, and reported that the ship was running smooth and quiet. The mechanical engines were dark, and they drifted through a covering of stratus clouds with only physics and Tony’s augmentation to keep them aloft.

“Why don’t you trust me?” Tony asked without looking up. He was the most sensitive sorcerer Rhodey had ever encountered, feeling even the slightest pull on his constructs long after they were invested.

Glaring at the side of Tony’s head, Rhodey let the constructs go. “This is dangerous and stupid,” Rhodey pointed out, not for the first time, and probably not for the last. “We should either get above the clouds, or drop below them. The wings are icing over.”

“I know,” Tony responded vaguely, reaching out with a negligent hand to drift his fingers over the wing controls. Connected to the ship’s controls, Rhodey felt the wing constructs warm, burning off ice. Tony didn’t even twitch, though Rhodey could see a scattering of lines inch over his throat.

“He’s moving too fast,” Tony muttered. “He’s either in a sports car, or someone has made an airship faster than me.” He glared at the map, neck stretching and shoulders pulled down as his ego reared its head. It was all Rhodey could do not to break into laughter when Tony added, “That is _not_ going to be okay.”

“Are we closing in on any of the bases the ambassador shared with us?” Rhodey asked to derail him before he got himself into a lather. Upcoming fight or not, Tony would disappear into the engineering bay and catapult them forward a few decades in augmented science to stay on the cutting edge of the technology wave. Tony was his best friend for a lot of reasons, but humility was not something that Tony Stark had in any quantity.

“No. We’re headed into the Alps, at least a thousand miles from the nearest base we know about.” Tony’s eyes flickered over the map madly, performing calculations, drawing conclusions, and, in general, functioning faster than any living human had a right to. Rhodey shook his head, but Tony still impressed him in every tiny detail just as much as he had when he was a scrawny sixteen year-old junior at MIT.

The wheel rattled under his hands as they hit a patch of turbulence, and Rhodey reached out to adjust the wings, guiding the ship through the rough air. He loved his own ship, but piloting _The Iron Avenger_ was a dream wrapped up in a cozy blanket with a cup of hot cocoa. She almost moved before he gave commands, leaping to every tiny shift in his hands.

“Maybe he’s not going home,” Rhodey suggested when they were even-keeled and gliding through the cloud cover once more. He kept one eye on the glowing displays indicating altitude, attitude, elevation, and the gas volume in the balloons.

Tony made a humming noise and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “But if he’s not going home, where the hell _is_ he going?” he mused aloud.

Rhodey just let him think. Tony did his best thinking out loud, and he liked to pretend he was talking to someone while he did it. Rhodey had learned to just watch the magic and put in the occasional noise to keep up the illusion that he was part of the conversation. There was no one else in the world who had the capacity for making James Rhodes feel slow and dimwitted the way Tony could if he wanted to, but Tony had never intentionally made him feel that way. He could be an annoying little shit sometimes, but when he finally stopped to ask for Rhodey’s opinion, he actually wanted it.

“He’s barely tried to fight at all every time we’ve confronted him, Hydra has been holding him captive if that dungeon was anything to go by, and yet the first thing that he does when he breaks out is go on his next mission, but he only completes one-third of it? He could have taken Landau and Annemarie and there isn’t actually a lot we could have done. So why didn’t he?” He looked over to Rhodey expectantly.

“Oh, is it my turn to talk?” Rhodey teased. Tony rolled his eyes and made a gracious gesture with one hand. “Maybe he doesn’t know any better.”

“Doesn’t know any better than what? Not to kill people? Most people who are capable of functioning understand that killing other people is a no-no.”

“Maybe,” Rhodey said slowly, “He’s so well programmed that he carried out the orders even when he doesn’t have to.” He looked over at Tony briefly, taking in the shadowed quality to his eyes, the tension around his lips. He considered the tilt of Tony’s shoulders, and the way his hands relaxed over the map. He risked adding, “Hydra is pretty damn good at programming.”

Tony’s jaw tightened, his expression growing harsh and distant, but his breath remained steady and his hands stayed open. “Yeah,” he agreed, “They are good at that.” Clearing his throat and shaking off the unpleasant memories, he asked, “But why not complete the mission then? Why run?”

“Could be he’s breaking out of the programming. Just too late to save Mallory Olsen.” Rhodey’s hands tightened on the wheel until the wood started to creak. Tony didn’t say anything, but his eyes finally lifted away from the map, lighted briefly on Rhodey’s hands, and then his face.

“Was it bad?” he asked softly.

Like it could ever be _good_ , walking in on a young woman’s corpse. The smell had hit him so sharply that he’d nearly thrown up the second he’d opened the door, and he’d needed a minute in the hall to collect himself before facing it again. It wasn’t like he’d never seen blood, but he hadn’t been expecting it. Considering that they were tracking an assassin to his mark, he _should_ have expected it. Unbidden, he remembered her eyes, half lidded like she’d barely woken up before she died. Maybe she hadn’t. She’d lain in the bed as though sleeping, only the partially opened eyes and the heavy spread of blood giving her away. The whole bed had been soaked with it, a sticky, congealing mess, but there had been something almost apologetic about the way one hand rested on her stomach, the other laying palm up on the coverlet. Her pale fingers curled as if beckoning to him was going to haunt his nights for a long time to come.

“I’ve seen worse,” he said finally. Tony didn’t push him, because Tony understood that when he said _I’ve seen worse_ , what he meant was _of course it was bad, and no I don’t want to talk about it._ He knew from long exposure that Tony would eventually catch him off guard, get him drunk, and help him talk about it. Rhodey would blubber the entire thing out onto his shoulder, and the next morning Tony would pretend that he had been so drunk that he didn’t remember. Maybe Rhodey wouldn’t even need the alcohol for this one, but he was too tired, and too sick with the memory of that girl’s blood to say a word just then.

“He’s stopped,” Tony said sharply, breaking the melancholy mood. He swished his hand across the protected map, flinging a sheet of condensation off the slick surface and peering at it. “Another ten miles due east. Don’t break cloud cover,” he added, pointing a finger at Rhodey, who only rolled his eyes and nodded in reluctant agreement. Satisfied with Rhodey’s capitulation, Tony abandoned the helm and rushed down the stairs, his ridiculous great coat billowing out behind him.

~*~

Rhodey kept his right hand braced under a handle, and his left coaxing the wings to maintain the delicate balance between hovering and falling. A mere hundred yards below them was a mountain pass, and a completely unacceptable twenty yards to the port was _a mountain_. Rhodey still couldn’t see anything, and Tony’s proximity sensors were snarking at him in his own voice. He’d thought it was a good idea to put his own voice on the sensors when it was Tony doing hairbrained crap like hovering an airship twenty yards away from a mountain, but it wasn’t so funny when he was in the pilot’s rig.

 _Are you paying even_ a little _attention to where you’re going?_ The construct asked snidely.

“I do not sound like that,” Rhodey said through gritted teeth, easing the ship a precious few yards away from the mountainside. A sudden updraft caught the starboard wings and sent them into a wild, pitching spin. Rhodey cussed over the proximity construct’s blaring as he struggled between the wing controls and the wheel, trying to regain lost altitude and keep them from smashing broadside into the jagged rocks. His stomach dropped, and his heartbeat mimicked the wild spinning of the dials, twisting in his chest like it wanted off the ride as bad as he did. He caught the wheel with both hands to steady the spin, but the wings floundered, and they pitched harder, snapping at the cables keeping them anchored to the balloons. Another few degrees against the much-slower turning balloons, and they were likely to break away from the support.

“You are _not_ getting away from me, you oversized rowboat! Oh, that’s _right_ , I went there!” he shouted over the wailing of the emergency alarms. As if responding to his voice, they shrieked louder.

Just when he thought he was going to lose it, Tony came flying up the stairs, naked and entirely unconcerned about the cold. The arc reactor’s glow set the surrounding mist alight, giving him the aspect of a very confused angel. He slipped around the console to get a hand around the wheel, and Rhodey let it go to shake his hand out. He set both hands to the wing construct and realized, once again, how astonishingly good Tony was at what he did. Ignoring the construct rendition of Rhodey’s voice, Tony brought the ship back under control and within fifteen yards of the mountain side, his eyes closed, body entirely relaxed despite the wind and water.

“Cast the line!” Tony called to the lower deck. His eyes opened just enough so that he could read his gauges.

Tony didn’t believe in magic – _it’s all just energy, science, Rhodey. Science!_ – but the way probability bent to Tony Stark’s will was a thing of beauty that defied explanation. From the forward deck, Clint fired a grappling hook. Any number of things could have - _should_ have - gone wrong, but for three seconds, the air was completely still, and the ship didn’t move. The hook shot straight and true through the clouds and _thunk_ ’ed solidly into the unseen side of the mountain.

“Do you think we’re late for tea?” Tony asked Rhodey with a fierce grin as Clint, Steve, and Natasha hooked belts over the lead and zipped down the line, modern-day buccaneers boarding the enemy vessel. Rhodey must have been out of his mind, because he started laughing. Tony laughed along with him, and then the line broke free. He turned the wheel while Rhodey gratefully opened the wings to lift them up and away from the mountainside.

As soon as they weren’t within heartbeats of smashing against the rocks, Tony let the wheel go. His arc reactor hummed loudly and burned a blinding white while his tattoos rose to the surface. As much as Rhodey hated the reason they ended up etched into his friend’s skin, he couldn’t help but admire them as the perfect synergy between form and function. With each pulse of Tony’s heart, they flared like waking embers, until they finally caught fire. The armor tore through his skin so quickly that anyone who didn’t know exactly what it was made of wouldn’t realize that Tony skinned himself alive every time he put it on.

Giving Rhodey a cocky grin and a wink, Tony stamped one heel on the deck. The construct flared to burning blue life, lifting him off the deck. “Stay safe,” he said, hovering a few feet off the deck.

“I am painting your ship silver and blue if you’re not back in an hour,” Rhodey warned.

“My oversized rowboat has orders to pitch you overboard if you try,” Tony responded cheerfully, dropping the faceplate forward. He gave Rhodey an academy-perfect salute, and then blew a kiss at him as he turned and made a bee line for the opening in the mountain.

“Throw _me_ overboard,” Rhodey snorted. He gave the console a sideways look. “Just try it. See where it gets you.”

~*~

The base occupants certainly hadn’t missed Tony blowing a hole in the side of the mountain. They just made it out of the wind before the first wave of Hydra goons came streaming around the corner. Despite all the noise, they looked startled to see the crew of _The Iron Avenger_ in their hallway, but Tony had to hand it to them – they were professionals. He took three hits to the chest before he’d gotten his repulsor charged, and heard another four ping off Steve’s shield. Natasha stood against his back, and Clint laid out on his stomach next to a crouching Steve, both of them using the shield for cover.

After the first volley of shots, there was a brief pause. Tony fired off a blast, hitting the man still standing while his comrades were crouched down. The force of it lifted him off his feet and sent him flying down the hall. Natasha leaned around his waist and returned fire, her rifle singing, the action fast and smooth. Next to them, Steve lifted the shield a few inches for Clint to fire from a prone position. Three more went down, and the remaining pair retreated around the corner, screaming into communications mirrors for backup.

Natasha put a hand on the small of his back and pushed, urging him forward. Tony walked her quickly down the corridor, charging both repulsors. The agents saw him first, aiming shots at his chest and stomach, but Natasha had the barrel of the gun around the corner in a blink. _Crack, crack!_ Two more dead agents. She worked the action on the rifle and put her back to the wall so she could see around the corner and still keep Steve and Clint in her line of sight.

“And now?” Clint prompted over the whistle of the wind blowing past the mountain’s newest two car garage door.

Tony turned his head, considering his crew – his _teammates_ \- through the blue white glow of his construct display. “Take it away, Cap. You’re the soldier – what do we do next?”

Steve didn’t even hesitate. Tony’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead in equal parts amusement and cloying affection as Steve twisted on his heel to point down the corridor behind him. “Clint and I will head this way. It looks like the corridor slopes down. Tony, Natasha, take the other corridor. Build a map as you go, don’t get lost, _don’t get separated_.” He looked hard at Tony. “I mean it.”

Tony held his hands up in surrender, grinning stupidly behind his faceplate just because Steve couldn’t see him. Steve nodded and stood.

“Stay on comms, and if you get into trouble, say something. We meet back here in one hour, no matter what.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Tony quipped.

Steve gave him an intense look, eyebrows pulled together, lips tight. He so obviously wanted to speak that Tony could _almost_ hear the words in the air.

“For God’s sake,” Clint complained, “Just tell him you’ll see him tonight, Stark.”

Steve opened his mouth to respond, but Tony cut him off and said, “I expect you in my cabin by eighteen hundred, Captain.” He winked, even knowing that Steve couldn’t see it, and was gratified when Steve grinned back at him, all the tension of the last week momentarily washed away in the tide.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Steve replied, deadpan. Clint groaned loudly and grabbed Steve by his belt to haul him away.

“You two are disgusting,” Natasha told him once they started moving cautiously down the hall. “Adorable,” she added, “But completely disgusting.”

“It’s a talent,” Tony said, but he didn’t have enough attention to spare on serious banter. His armor display was lit up like a bonfire on Christmas morning, more information flickering across his vision than he could assimilate as it started feeding him everything from the dimensions of the hallway to the air temperature.

“I really need a voice in this thing,” he mused.

He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Natasha snorted. “The last thing you need is a voice inside your head.”

“Already have a few of those. One more won’t hurt…” Tony’s voice trailed off as they moved down the corridor, an undefinable sense of wrongness tickling at the back of his neck. He was missing something important, something just barely out of reach, but every time he came close to it, it slipped away. The proximity sensor flared red and Tony stepped in front of Natasha as a group of agents rounded the curve in the hallway, already shooting. He covered his chest and faceplates with his forearms, grinding his teeth as the barrage of bullets left burning dents in the metal.

Natasha dropped down behind him and started firing through the narrow gap in his legs, hitting several of the agents in the knees and groins. It created just enough confusion that Tony was able to separate his forearms and fire a wide blast from the chest piece, catching two of the agents in the face, and knocking them back into their fellows. Natasha kept firing until they were down and then stood quickly.

“We need to get out of this hallway,” she said, all teasing and banter gone. “They’re going to get behind us. This is a killbox waiting for a time to happen.”

They started to jog, Tony wincing at all the noise, but it wasn’t possible to make the armor silent. It weighed almost as much as a small car, and the plates weren’t exactly quiet moving against each other. He slowed as they approached an intersecting hallway, leading with his repulsor. He fire a quick blast, catching a single agent in the shoulder. She yelped and brought her gun up, but Natasha put a bullet between her eyes before she even got her finger on the trigger. They kept running, Natasha carrying the long rifle against her shoulder, Tony growing more uneasy and agitated the further they forged into the base.

Pulling him to a stop in the middle of the next corridor, Natasha picked the lock on a door, flung it open, and went in rifle first. She grabbed Tony’s wrist to pull him in after her, and then closed and relocked the door. They waited in the darkness, holding still, positioned to catch anyone who came in after them unawares. The clock in the bottom right-hand corner of his display ticked off three minutes… four… seven. A clatter of running feet grew louder down the hallway, passed their dark room, and faded again. Natasha waited another two minutes before she clicked on the torch affixed to her rifle. Tony helpfully activated the lights set in his helmet, and almost threw up. He made a loud noise, stumbling back toward the door, eyes running over a terrifyingly familiar room.

They’d kept him a featureless cell, everything painted the same nauseating blue-gray. Blue-gray walls, blue-gray bed, blue-gray blanket, blue-gray sheets, blue-gray pillow, blue-gray clothing when they let him get dressed at all. There was no stimulation, no variation, and if he scratched marks in the walls, they painted over them while he slept. He couldn’t count the days: meals were irregular, the lights never changed except when he was in the box, and he breathed blue-gray like water. Opposite the wall there was a blue-gray door with a blue-gray lever and blue-gray bolts. Behind the door was only darkness, tiny, suffocating, darkness. He remembered the taste of blue-gray, and the way blue-gray felt under his fingers, and how he’d been so starved for contact and color that he’d wept when they’d dragged him into a cave and dumped him at Yinsen’s feet-

Pain exploded against his shoulder. He sucked in a startled breath and stared wide-eyed at Natasha, her face bone white in his helmet lights, her hair a fiery halo, butt of the rifle raised to hit him again.

“Stark!” she snapped, “Snap out of it!”

“I’m good,” he gasped, “I’m fine. Good.”

Breathing again, Tony could see that it wasn’t _his_ cell – it was shaped wrong, too small, the bed bolted into the wrong wall, the isolation chamber conspicuously absent. Where it would have been, there was instead a desk. There was a footlocker next to the bed, pictures hanging on the walls. This was either someone’s bunk, or the cell of a prisoner a lot more cooperative than he’d been.

“You with me, Stark?” Natasha asked cautiously.

“I’m here,” Tony reassured her. He popped the faceplate so he could breathe and she could see his face.

She moved the beam of her torch up near his shoulder so his face was visible in the glow, and then nodded. “What is this room?”

“It’s…not, but it looked like.” Tony swallowed, shook his head. “They held me here, in this mountain. I recognize it.” He shivered hard inside the armor. “I _feel_ it.”

Natasha watched him carefully. Tony hated that she’d seen him trembling in terror, but if it was going to be anyone, it might as well have been her. She wouldn’t tell another soul, even if he would always know that she’d _seen_ him, every time their eyes met.

“We’ll burn it before we leave,” she said finally, voice dead and flat the way it was when she was at her most terrifying.

Tony found it surprisingly comforting. “Burn it? I’m going to tear this whole fucking mountain down.”

Natasha gave him another long look and then went through the desk in a perfunctory search. Finding nothing, she led Tony back out into the hall, drawing her rifle snugly to her shoulder as they went. She moved like a stalking wolf, no energy wasted on frivolous movement, head level, hips even, knees loose. Tony watched her move in a wasted effort to keep the broken memories of the place from intruding.

They turned a corner and Tony sucked in a breath and held it. He knew it from the opposite direction, could trace it back to his cell: three rights, two lefts, one right, three lefts, deeper into the mountain. They dragged him on his back some days when he couldn’t, or wouldn’t walk, and he counted the ceiling tiles as they did, three hundred and seventy-one, but one of them had a crack in the middle and he miscounted it as two just that one time.

He kept his breath quiet and focused on Natasha’s hips so he wouldn’t take the third right to the tiled shower where they stood in circles and hosed him down until his fresh tattoos bled, and the trough under the dark window where they held his head under and let him die, again, again, again. _Go fuck yourself_ , he told them each time, but sometimes he could only say it in his head because his throat wouldn’t work, and his sinuses burned, and it was easier to just close his eyes and breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe. Just one more breath, one more, it will be easier the next time, the next breath won’t burn. Just keep breathing.

The corridor terminated at a perpendicular hallway. Natasha tried to turn left, but Tony caught her elbow and pulled her to the right. The left-hand corridor led to a mess hall with an average of forty-one agents crouched over their gruel, smiling and laughing like it was a three course meal. They fed him like a child, holding the spoon up to his lips and making baby noises. If he wouldn’t take it from their hands, he didn’t eat. Most days he needed the calories more than he needed his pride.

“Slow down,” Natasha hissed, making him realize that he was nearly running. He let out a measured breath, took in another, slowed to a fast walk. He bypassed a set of double doors that led to a bathroom, pulled her away from an adjoining corridor, and dragged her up a set of stairs. He remembered the stairs best upside-down, flopping uncontrollably against someone’s back as he carried Tony up. Fifteen stairs, and the last one was dented in the middle. Tony stopped at the top and stared down at it. Perfectly straight, shiny and new. They’d replaced it, fixed it finally after leaving it there for three months to spite him. _Did you know your stair’s broken_? He’d ask every time. _Is it?_ Schmidt had replied with a snake’s smile.

“Stark! Tony!” Natasha shoved him up until he took the last stair, and then pushed him into the doorframe just in time to avoid the notice of a squad of agents running past them one level down. She rapped her knuckles on his forehead. “Open up.”

“I’m busy,” Tony told her, but she smashed the flat of her hand against his cheek until he pushed her away and popped the faceplate. “What?”

“You need to tell me now if you can’t keep it together. We’ll backtrack, switch in Rhodes.”

Tony was swamped with immediate, biting rage. “You don’t give me orders,” he told her lowly. “This is _my ship, my crew_. My ship, my rules, you remember that?” He sucked in fast breaths, his neck and cheeks growing warm with the force of his pulse. 

“Listen to yourself,” she ordered calmly.

The rage drained out of him all at once, leaving him feeling sick and weak. His stomach gave a liquid twist and Tony had to brace his hands on his knees and breathe through his nose to keep from throwing up. His mouth watered, and his lips went cold. He swallowed hard, once, again. He flicked his wrists and the gauntlets detached from his hands, peeling back to lay against his wrists. It felt strange, the gauntlet fingers maintaining a phantom connection so it felt, for a moment, like he had four hands. He dug the communication mirror out of his gorget and breathed on it, tracing a quick pattern with his finger.

“James,” he said, hating that Natasha was there to hear him, “I can’t sleep.”

“I’ve got you,” Rhodey replied immediately, “You’re safe, I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Tony shuddered, closed his eyes, felt the fear and panic start to recede. He hadn’t need to call Rhodey and beg to be calmed down in months and he burned with the humiliation of needing it in the middle of infiltrating an enemy stronghold. If he weren’t on a mission, if Natasha wasn’t watching him with her hawk’s eyes, he would have sat down and asked Rhodey to read to him. Instead, he set the mirror to his forehead. “Night.”

“See you in the morning,” Rhodey replied automatically, but not offhandedly. He said it every time like he meant it, because every time he _did_ mean it.

Rhodey didn’t ask him what was wrong, why, if he was okay. Rhodey was his best friend for a lot of reasons, but that was maybe the one that Tony needed the most. Rhodey didn’t ask what was wrong, because he knew, and he didn’t ask why because it wasn’t relevant, and he didn’t ask if Tony was okay because he already knew that Tony wasn’t. Tony slid the mirror back into the neck of the armor and snapped his hands forward to draw the gauntlets over his fingers. He closed his eyes and sank into the armor. His tattoos burned against his skin, consumed him from his toes to his neck. He hadn’t been helpless even when he’d been a prisoner, and he wasn’t about to let Schmidt win when Tony was right on his doorstep.

“You good?” Natasha asked, her expression blank, her voice entirely lacking judgement.

Tony nodded, and he meant it when he said, “Yeah. I feel like making some noise. I think that would be fun.” His smile felt brittle and manic, but it matched the hectic energy in him as he turned it on Natasha. “How about you?”

“I’m always up for a little fun,” she said with a silky smile.

He wasn’t surprised to open the door to Schmidt’s office and find it empty after all the noise they’d made right outside without a reaction. The memory of being on his knees on the red carpet tried to overwhelm him, but he set it aside and stepped into a different headspace – he wasn’t Tony Stark: genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, _traumatized survivor_. He was the armored avenger: protected, untouchable, a creation of Wrath of Vengeance.  

“There aren’t enough of them,” Tony said, crossing the room briskly to the desk. It was an observation that he should have made twenty minutes before, _would have made_ twenty minutes before, if he hadn’t been so blinded with waking nightmares. “This place was always crawling with goons. Goon headquarters,” he went on to explain when Natasha only gave him a hiked eyebrow. He started leafing through drawers. “We shouldn’t have even gotten within a hundred yards of this mountain. So something is going on, something that requires serious manpower. If we’re lucky, it requires series manpower in the deepest bowels of this shithole, and we can just bury them all when we leave.”

“If we’re unlucky?” Natasha prompted, looking up from her search of the bookcase. She ran her clever hands over each book, feeling quickly for hidden levers or disguised safe boxes.

“If we’re unlucky, then Schmidt has managed to finish whatever madness I foiled by escaping. Wouldn’t that be a fun coincidence?”

She made a noncommittal noise, moving on to the next shelf. He found an empty document case under the desk and started filling it with papers. He didn’t have time to read them, but he was taking anything he could carry. He found a handwritten book in a hidden compartment and flipped through it briefly, noting diagrams of constructs that looked nothing like the intricate pieces of work he knew Schmidt was capable of pulling off – they were primitive, ugly things that made his skin crawl. He snapped the book closed and shoved it in the document case, along with a silk-wrapped copper dagger, and a package of photographs.

Natasha clicked her tongue against her teeth in an interested noise. He glanced up as she yanked down a thick tome and flipped it open to reveal a cache of trinkets and idols, savage things. She reached in to pick one up, but Tony snagged her wrist and shook his head.

“These are augmented with some nasty constructs. Old ones.” He felt his upper lip curling up as he stared at them. The paraetheric energy that clung to them was so dark and twisted that he could actually _smell_ it, a faint sepulcher stench, dry old bones and centuries-old decay. “Close it up. We’ll lay it at the center of the fire and hope they burn.”

Natasha nodded and shut the false tome tightly. She tucked it into her jacket and Tony wanted to tear it away from her, but there was no easier to way to carry it, and he wasn’t willing to leave it behind. The question was, where was Schmidt and his army of minions?

“I guess he couldn’t have made it easy and written out the details of his diabolic plan on his calendar,” Tony lamented.

Making an amused sound low in her throat, Natasha reached up and pulled a chart down off the wall. She handed it over, eyes glittering with a vicious kind of mirth. It was a carefully laid out astrological chart with each date shown as a phase of the moon. Tony barked out a laugh when he realized that the current date was circled in a thick black pen, with the word _hӧhle_ written underneath. 

It was a word he knew well.

 _Cave_.

~*~

Something was wrong. It was different. Bright lights, chanting, strapped into the chair, but in the middle of a large room. Sound echoed off the ceiling. Somewhere, water dripped on stone. His chest was bare, the artifact was visible, vulnerable. There was something tiny and sharp stabbing into his eyes from inside his skull, and he was just right on the verge of remembering something important.

_They’re going wipe me._

**_Fight! They’re going to_ destroy _you!_**

_He’ll kill me if I fight._

**_You’ve been out too long. You’re stronger. Fight!_ **

He remembered an airship, and snow, and blood. He fought.

~*~

Steve followed the sounds of shouting down the sloping hallway, and chose a left-hand corridor only because it seemed to lead further _in_ and _down_. Clint was as whisper-quiet as a ghost beside him, cheerful joking gone as they moved through the halls of the base, dodging running soldiers where they could, taking them out as quietly as possible where they couldn’t. Tony and Natasha must have made enough noise to get the majority of attention, or else they’d just happened on an area of the base that was nearly deserted, because they encountered very little resistance as they moved deeper into the mountain.

They checked dark, empty rooms as they moved. Most were residential quarters with bunk beds, some personal items. Several lavatories, a commons area, a gym. Steve stopped in the gym’s doorway and stared at the mat. Could it have been just barely more than a week ago that he was sparing with Grant, the same mind-numbing routine as the previous nine months? The gym set up was so close to the one back at SHIELD headquarters that Steve almost expected to see Grant come in behind him, the last week all one strange dream.

“Cap?” Clint prompted, peering around his shoulder into the room.

Steve shook his head and nudged his chin down the hall. They cleared the hall, and took a left-hand turn into another corridor with no rooms, only a staircase leading down. It continued the same way for three floors, rows upon rows of living quarters that housed four each.

“Where are all the soldiers?” Clint asked as they reached the end of another corridor and turned back for the stairs. “This is a lot of beds. Even if it is the middle of the day, these halls should be crowded with people.”

Brows drawn in tight, Steve shrugged a shoulder, but he had a bad feeling in his gut. He jerked his head for Clint to follow and ran down the next flight of stairs. Working spaces, offices, lounges. They went through them quickly, loading Clint’s pack with anything they could carry out. One of the desks had a childish drawing of a little girl in pigtails holding onto a mom and a dad. Steve traced a finger over it, and left it where it was tacked up to the wall. It was chilling and somehow unsettling to have a tangible reminder that these soldiers were _people_ – they had spouses, children, pets. Did any of them go home at the end of the day to kiss their loved ones’ forehead, or were they all trapped in the mountain, crowded in four to a room, writing home?

“This is getting seriously creepy,” Clint observed, pulling a map of Europe off the wall with small red dots drawn in. He folded it up and stuck it in the pack with the other papers they’d gathered. Steve quickly went through the desk, pulling out stacks of sealed files. He glanced over them quickly, realized that they were just disciplinary memos, and set them aside. The last drawer was locked and Steve smashed it with the edge of the shield. He felt a brief pang of guilt as the wood splintered and the lock broke, but he found a sealed box of documents inside that he handed over to Clint. The bag was already getting full, and Steve just hoped that they hadn’t grabbed nothing but supply memos.

“Let’s move on, see if we can find where they all went.” Steve snorted out a laugh and suggested, “Maybe they’re all watching a play.”

Clint grinned. “That would be convenient.”

Steve nodded, but the bad feeling grew worse, and he didn’t think they were going to find the soldiers all packed in to a neatly controllable space. They left the corridor of working spaces and continued down to laboratory spaces filled with operating tables, examination rooms, strange things floating in jars that Steve didn’t want to examine too closely. They found medical records for the soldiers and personnel on the base, and experimentation records that made Steve’s skin crawl. He looked in between Clint’s nearly-full pack of documents, to the filing cabinet filled with horrors and made a frustrated noise.

“We can’t take it all,” Clint said gently.

Steve nodded and crouched to start looking through the files. He didn’t think it was very likely that they would helpfully label a file as _James Buchanan Barnes, Best Friend of Captain America_ , but it was worth a shot. Clint left him to his quick examination to search through the rest of the room. Steve let his eyes drift over the forms, feeling sick with the knowledge that he wouldn’t forget a single word of it, even the things he didn’t actually take the time to read. They would all be stored there in his memory, just waiting for something to trigger the recollection of the ten year-old girl Hydra tested hallucinogenic drugs on and then turned loose in a roomful of snakes.

“We’re running low on time, Cap,” Clint said gently as Steve closed a drawer in frustration.

“There’s something important in here,” Steve said through his teeth, pulling open another drawer. “We’re going to miss it.”

“We’ll come back for it if we can.” Clint took the file out of his hands and put it back in the cabinet. He pulled on Steve’s arm until he stood. “Let’s just find out what we can, and get the hell out of here. And if we just happen to accidentally blow up all their sick toys on our way out the door, well… carefully laid explosive devices go off all the time, and it’s a pity, but that’s life.”

Steve couldn’t even summon a smile for Clint’s attempt at humor. He reluctantly abandoned the cabinet, and they made their way into an eerily familiar room. Observation tables set up around an open space in the center. Four bolts stuck out of the rough floor where a chair should have been. Clint crouched down and touched one of the bolts.

“This was removed recently,” he said, standing to look around the rest of the room. “The bolts haven’t even collected any dust.” His eyes flickered to Steve and he guessed, “Maybe it’s not a play they’re watching.”

“Entertaining the troops with torture,” Steve said, unable to mask the fury in his voice. “Just how I’d choose to run my base.” He stared at the shiny bolts and looked back toward the door. “Now we just need to figure out where they took it.”

“I say let’s stop with the sneaking and just go to where all the noise is.”

Steve nodded shortly and adjusted his shield. “I could use a little noise.”

**~*~**

The noise wasn’t what he expected. With as many living quarters and office spaces they’d found, Steve expected the roar of a crowd. What they were finally drawn to was a rumbling, rhythmic chant. Clint gave him an unsettled look as they came to the source of the noise – a single door set down a long hallway that transition from finished steel panels to natural stone part way through. They’d found and dispatched two bored guards at the bottom of the stairs, and another two lounging against the walls further down the corridor.

“Security is pretty lax,” Clint whispered, nudging the door open enough to peer in. “They’re performing some kind of ritual,” he reported.

“They probably didn’t expect company, let alone so far into their stronghold,” Steve replied, but he was uneasy with the explanation. They’d been inside the base for forty minutes – someone should have been down to tell them that they were under attack. He nudged Clint back and took his place at the door, peering through the crack.

The smell hit him like a brick to the face. He shut the door hastily and covered his mouth with his hand.

“What?” Clint asked urgently.

“Blood,” Steve said, “A _lot_ of it.”

They exchanged worried glances and Steve took in a breath. The smell wasn’t as shocking once he was expecting it, and he eased the door open again. From the door’s unfortunate position, he could only see feet and legs, a slice of a circle of sorcerers. Judging by how many he could see and factoring in the arc of the circle, Steve calculated that there would have to be twenty-seven of them. He’d never even heard of a ritual that would take twenty-seven practitioners to complete. And where was all the blood coming from?

Glancing at Clint to make sure he was ready, Steve pushed the door open and slipped inside.

~*~

“The entrance to the upper levels of the cave is through here,” Tony said in a low whisper as they crouched beside a door set in an unassuming side hallway. They’d encountered a brief spattering of resistance after leaving Schmidt’s office, but otherwise the base was frighteningly deserted. He hadn’t exactly been given free rein to wander the halls the last time he was on the base, but the areas he’d been in while he was Schmidt’s personal prisoner had always been teeming with people.

“Layout?” Natasha asked.

Tony shifted and peeled back his gauntlet so he could smooth out a space in the dusty floor. He sketched out the shape of the cave, a place he would never forget. “The main floor is open, but there are a few different levels, natural shelves that they’ve smoothed out. Different experiments and projects were going on around the levels. This section here is a ritual circle. No one was allowed up there except Schmidt and his asslicker, Zola.” He drew in a semi-round area at the northwest corner, and then connected it to the opposite wall with a swipe of his fingers. “This is the upper level – Schmidt’s private observation lounge, and a catwalk. There’s a protuberance here, so he could stand on the walk and look down at the ritual circle.”

Sitting back on his heels, Tony examined the quick drawing. “Whatever they wanted me for it, it had to do with that circle. And if this is Schmidt’s Big Day to Shine, he’s going to be right there, lording it up like one of his gods.”

Natasha flickered a glance at him. “His gods?”

Tony nodded, his lip curling up in disgust. “He believes that the old Norse gods are his personal patrons, that he’s one of them, reborn to carry out a mission of purification on Earth.”

“Charming.”

“The best kind of charming – batshit crazy.” Tony turned away from the diagram and examined the door. There were no guards. The door was warded up to heavens, so Schmidt probably thought he didn’t need them. Tony set his bare hand against the door and snarled low in his throat. The arrogant shit was using _his wards_. Not just the ones he’d made while he was in captivity, but new ones, a set he’d created just six months before. They weren’t even cleared through R &D for production.

“Oh, now you’ve made me mad,” Tony told the door. It didn’t respond, but the wards did. As soon as he reached out to them, they opened up to welcome him home, singing with his familiar energy, inviting him into the matrix of protection. They weren’t all his wards, and some of them were startlingly sophisticated. The construct engineer who’d made them had done his job too well, though, and they were integrated so perfectly with his own wards that they might as well have been his.

He didn’t just close them down like with the first Hydra base, but picked apart the weave. Instead of making it impossible to breech the perimeter, he informed the wards that they were holding up the walls. They took to their new task happily, wrapping around the walls of the cave, curling away from the doors. Just before he withdrew from the matrix of the reorganized wards, he felt a lower door crack open. The wards weren’t attuned to identify people, but it had to be Clint and Steve.

Pulling out of the wards, Tony reported, “Steve and Clint are entering the lower cavern now. If we’re going to go, we better go.”

Natasha nodded and Tony nudged the faceplate down. If Schmidt was on the catwalk looming over his ritual, there would be no time for stealth. Charging both repulsors, Tony cocked his knee back and kicked through the door. It hit the wall and splintered with the force, clearing it for Tony take a shot at the first person he locked onto. The guard screamed and flew back along the catwalk, his partner immediately opening fire, only to take a pair of quick shots to the chest from Natasha’s M1 Garand. He toppled over the catwalk with only a surprised gurgle.

Natasha emerged from behind him to kneel at the sparse cover of the stair railing. She fired rapidly at the goons already charging up stairs, but Tony had eyes only for Schmidt, standing on the outcropping in the middle of the catwalk, exactly where Tony expected. Below them, more than two dozen voices rose in perfect sync, chanting in a low, thrumming rhythm.

“Mr. Stark,” Schmidt greeted with an oily smile. “How fitting that the fates would choose to bring us back together on this very day of triumph. It’s only right, since you helped make it possible.”

Tony knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, he should just lift his hand and fire a repulsor blast right into the sick freak’s chest, but he flipped the faceplate up and told himself that he was gathering important intel. His eyes flickered down to the ritual, quickly counting twenty-seven construct engineers spaced precisely around the most complicated construct circle he’d ever seen. He couldn’t make himself focus on the grisly scene that surrounded them, his eyes skittering away immediately. Right in the middle of the circle was a bare-chested man strapped into a high backed chair, screaming against a gag while he thrashed in his bonds. Shocked, Tony recognized him as Bucky from Steve’s photographs, and felt his jaw clench with sudden anger and horror at knowing that Steve was walking into that scene.

“Well,” Tony said, turning back to face Schmidt, “I couldn’t let you take all the credit.” He took a casual step forward, firing a blast of energy into the mob of goons struggling up the stairs under Natasha’s fire. They fell back in a heap of shouting and confusion. “What, exactly,” Tony continued in as even a voice as he could manage, “Are we celebrating here?”

“The purification of the world, of course,” Schmidt answered easily. It was all so calm and friendly, like they were having a chat over tea. “In just a few moments, our friend here will be wiped out of his own body. He will be purified as a vessel for one of my divine brothers.” He grinned, eyes dancing in delight as he concluded, “Tomorrow morning, Mr. Stark, the world will remember why it once feared the dark.”

Tony laughed shortly. “Have you been practicing that? Just waiting for an opportunity to use it?” He laughed harder when Schmidt’s face fell into a nasty sneer. “Well, hey, you managed to make it rhyme at least. It’s a cool line, you should write it down. Put it in a cartoon or something.”

“Make your childish taunts, Stark,” Schmidt snapped. “But humanity has become complacent, weak of body, of spirit, of mind. The world hungers to be taken to task.”

“By you?” Tony asked incredulously. “Who the hell are you?”

Schmidt smiled viciously, and Tony had the feeling that he’d given the man exactly the line he wanted. Stretching his neck, Schmidt reached up and dug his fingers into his skin. Tony watched in sick fascination as he peeled his skin away with a wet, sucking sound. He threw the slick mess to the catwalk and gave Tony a lipless grin.

“I? I am a god!” His opposite hand came up in a flash and he fired a Luger pistol at Tony’s face.

Tony started moving as soon as he saw Schmidt’s hand twitch, and just barely managed to turn in time to avoid the shot to the head, feeling the bullet whistle past his cheek. He flipped the faceplate down and charged across the catwalk to meet the madman, cocking back a fist. Schmidt caught his armored fist and cackled as he tightened his grip. To Tony’s absolute shock, he felt the armor bending under Schmidt’s fingers. He fired the chest beam at a mere five-percent charge, and it wasn’t more than a flash of light at that level, but it made Schmidt release him.

Hopping back a quick step, Tony wiggled his fingers to make sure they all worked. Below him, the chanting stopped, and absolute pandemonium erupted. Schmidt screamed, incoherent with fury, and rushed to the catwalk railing. “YOU FOOLS!” he shrieked into the panicked mass of running forms.

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” Tony said with a manic smile stretching wide over his face. “I brought friends to our shindig. Hope you have enough punch.”

Schmidt rounded on him, his expression so full of malice and hatred that Tony was surprised he didn’t burst into flames. With a loud bellow, Schmidt charged him.

~*~

It took the soldiers standing just past the door several moments to realize they weren’t alone - several moments that Steve needed to process to the horror of the sight that greeted them. Staring around the cavern, he abruptly understood why the base seemed disserted. Hundreds of bodies were laid out on the floor, chests broken open, ribs peeled back in gruesome parodies of wings, their faces frozen in a permanent rictus of agony and terror. He remembered the little girl’s drawing and wondered if her father was laid out on the slick floor. The terrifying abuse of life made his stomach twist and he swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

His eyes flickered away from the horror and locked onto the circle of chanting practitioners. He shifted an inch to his left, and his blood boiled in his chest. Strapped to the chair, gagged and bound, was Bucky, wild-eyed and struggling like a thing possessed. Steve shook so hard that he almost couldn’t get the shield off his back, but it was flying through the air before he’d even taken aim. It took an unobservant guard in the back of the neck, and then ricocheted off to hit the man next to him in the side of the head. Clint fired off three arrows before the others even turned around, and Steve positioned himself to catch the shield, spinning as soon as it met his hand to take a guard in the knee, and then ducking behind it to fend off a hail of bullets. Above him, he heard the sounds of gunfire, and the distinctive whine of Tony’s repulsors, but all he could see was Bucky, struggling in that chair.

Half of the guards had already peeled off to meet Natasha and Tony up on the catwalk, and the ones that were left were slow to react, their faces pale, looking sick and shaken. Steve had no pity for them. He thundered a battle cry, the words bubbling up in the Gaelic that he learned at his mother knee. He smashed the shield across one man’s face, drove it hard into the gut of a woman pointing a shaking pistol at him. He heard her ribs crack, and didn’t even flinch, let her fall next to one of the men that she’d maybe helped to kill, and certainly stood by to let it happen at the least. The ground was slick with blood, the cavern filled with Bucky’s muffled screams and that horrible, grinding chanting. Steve barreled through the line of practitioners, letting go with the shield to knock two of them aside. They lost the rhythm of the chant and fell in a daze, interrupting the ritual.

Shrieking against the gag and thrashing, Bucky looked up at him with wild eyes. Steve immediately placed the mass of greasy curls, the lingering dark khol as belonging to the assassin, but he didn’t hesitate to bring the shield down on one thick shackle. A sorcerer charged him with a drawn knife and Steve backhanded him with the shield. A moment later, an arrow sunk into his chest and he stumbled backward. Steve reached out with his free hand to pull the muzzle of Bucky’s face.

“Stay still,” he ordered. Bucky nodded, licking his pale lips. Putting one hand to Bucky’s neck to turn his face away, Steve angled himself so he was nearly in Bucky’s lap and brought the shield down three more times, shouting in rage at each unsuccessful attempt. The fourth blow opened the shackle and Bucky’s metallic arm sprang free, the star on his shoulder gleaming bloody red in the construct lights. He reached across his body and yanked up the weaker shackles on the opposite arm while Steve brought the shield down on the chains between his ankles. Bucky tackled him instantly, driving him to the floor hard enough to push the air out of his lungs.

Steve looked up at him in confusion, holding one hand against Bucky’s collarbone while he struggled to get his breath back. “Bucky! Stop, you know me!”

“Prig,” Bucky snapped, a fierce grin stretching over his lips. “Next time I’ll let you get shot.”

“Knave,” Steve replied immediately, and he could have screamed for joy. Bucky scrambled back to his feet and hauled Steve up with him. “If I were’na savin’ you, I wouldn’ be get’ing shot!”

Bucky laughed and shoved him away. “Go break some kneecaps,” he suggested.

“I can reach faces now!” Steve replied, but he was already moving, darting between scrambling practitioners to catch the soldiers, now firing indiscriminately on their own people.

From up on the catwalk, an unfamiliar voice shrieked, “YOU FOOLS!” and it felt like victory in his bones.

Bucky had always been an amazing fighter, but he moved among the soldiers like Death given breath, charging into the mix with nothing but his bare hands, and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Steve deflected a shot, broke the wrist of the man shooting, and kicked him toward the knot of Bucky’s victims. It felt right to let Bucky tear them apart, and maybe he would have nightmares about the carnage later, but it was a price he would willingly pay five times over.

Looking up, he saw that Tony and Natasha were not having the same luck. A horror with a grisly red face had Tony pinned against the railing, laying into him with vicious barehanded blows, and Natasha was struggling to hold her position with the guards rushing up at her in waves. She would have to reload soon, and would be overrun. Steve snagged Clint on the way past and pointed him to her.

“Let Bucky take the grunts!” he called over the general mayhem.

Clint gave him a wide-eyed look over his shoulder. “As long as he doesn’t come for me afterwards!” He started firing arrows into the mob surging up the stairs. Steve left him to it, and started running. He avoided looking at the mangled corpses, leaping over bodies to get under the catwalk. Flipping the shield around so it caught on his back, Steve crouched, and leapt. He’d pushed off too hard and smashed the top of his head into the underside of the catwalk, leaving him momentarily dazed, but his hands reached out automatically to catch at the side. As soon as he could see straight, he flipped himself up to the catwalk, releasing the shield midair to smash into the red-faced monster’s arm.

Snarling, the man backed away quickly. Tony straightened up, coughing. “Steve, meet Schmidt. Schmidt, meet The American Dream. So glad I could introduce you.” He shook his head and steadied himself.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you,” Steve told him, focusing all his rage in on Schmidt’s skinned face.

“As I have been eager to meet you, Captain,” Schmidt replied. He’d regained his composure, and opened his mouth to continue speaking, but Tony threw up a hand and hit him in the chest with a repulsor blast.

“ _Give it a rest_!” he ordered as Schmidt stumbled back. Steve took the hint and let fly with the shield, chasing after it. Schmidt dodged the shield, but Steve caught it as it rebounded on the railing and drove it into Schmidt’s chest. He heard the whine of Tony’s repulsor and automatically angled the shield to catch it, directing the full force of it to Schmidt’s face. He shrieked and scrambled out of the beam, stumbling backwards into a space of low black couches, vibrant green plants, and, right in the center, a pedestal with a glowing blue cube on top. Steve saw and quickly dismissed a man huddled in the far corner, clutching a leather case to his chest.

Schmidt rushed to the cube, hands held out. Steve had no idea what it was, but if it was something Schmidt wanted his hands on, Steve had no intention of letting him touch it. He leapt over one of the couches and checked his shoulder into Schmidt’s side, sending him careening into another of the couches. He hit it and bounced off the back to land hard on the floor.

“Doctor Zola!” Schmidt shouted, seeing the man huddled against the wall, “Help me, you idiot!”

Zola turned, grabbing just enough of Steve’s attention that Schmidt was able to get back to his feet and lunge to the cube. Thrusters roaring, Tony flew into the lounge area. He fired off a quick series of blasts, shattering the glass case around the cube, and knocking it right out from under Schmidt’s hands. Schmidt shouted and dove for it, hands finally closing around it.

Cackling, he stood, the cube clutched in his hand. Steve braced himself, but nothing happened. Schmidt’s mad laughter faded as he stared into the cube’s swirling surface. “But why?” he asked. Light flickered over his skin, and it took Steve a moment realize that it wasn’t a reflection of the cube. His gruesome face split and cracked, letting out bright rays of light. Steve jumped up to one couch, snagged Tony right out of the air, and dragged him to the floor behind the paltry cover with his shield over their heads. They’d barely landed when a burst of light flooded the cavern, followed a moment later by an explosion of sound like thunder that left Steve’s ears ringing.

Silence fell like a blanket of snow. Steve sat up slowly to find only a blackened space on the floor where Schmidt had stood with a molten hole in the center. Dr. Zola was curled in the corner, his case thrown protectively over his face, unconscious or dead. A quick glance down the catwalk showed Natasha slowly straightening from her shooter’s crouch. A moment later, Clint made his way up the stairs, climbing over the dead soldiers. Steve moved down the catwalk, looking over at the scene of the massacre below. Bucky stood in the approximate center of the cavern, covered in blood and looking like a nightmare, but alive.

In the wake of all the destruction, Steve felt completely cauterized. He looked around the room in mute horror, the sheer number of bodies visible from the catwalk making his stomach twist. A tremor ran up his spine and closed around his throat. His next breath came out a sob, equal parts relief at finding Bucky whole and alive, and overwhelming sorrow at the grisly scene. He braced his hands on the railing and tried to suppress the tears pushing at his eyes.

Tony’s gauntleted hand fell gently to his shoulder. Steve soaked up the comfort and choked on a sob, clenching his eyes shut tightly, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Tony drew in a breath to speak, but was interrupted by a sudden tremor. The catwalk lurched and shook. Under Bucky’s feet, the complicated spell circle started to glow a deep, pulsing green. Bucky quickly stepped out of the circle and ran for the stairs. Alarmed, Tony pushed past Steve and put his hand on the wall.

“We need to go,” he said, “We need to go _now_! The wards are holding up the walls, but they won’t for much longer. _Jesus_!” He jerked his hand away from the wall and ran back across the catwalk.

Steve, already moving in the other direction, caught his arm as the cavern gave another shudder. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

“Zola!” He shrugged Steve’s hand off and ran into the lounge.

Steve followed, shouting behind him for the others to get out. He jumped over the molten hole in the floor where Schmidt had exploded, noting in passing that the cube was nowhere to be seen. Zola was just stirring as Tony reached his side. Tony grabbed the leather case out of his arms, threw it at Steve, and picked Zola up like a sack of potatoes.

“GO!” Tony shouted, and Steve turned to run. He heard Tony’s thrusters fire behind him and picked up more speed. A violent shudder ripped through cavern, and the catwalk jerked, wrenching free of the wall. Steve kicked off from the falling walkway, reaching for what remained of the stairwell. He caught the edge of the platform with one hand, struggling to hold onto the leather case and keep himself from falling at the same time, as the floor opened up below him with a great shriek of protesting stone.

A metal hand came over the side of the platform. Steve thought it was Tony, but when he looked up, it was Bucky’s bloody face staring down at him.

“Always… saving you…” Bucky grunted, hauling him up while the platform shook under them. He gave a massive heave, and they both ended up in the hallway. “Easier when you weighed ten pounds,” he concluded.

“Less flirting, more running!” Tony snapped, landing with Zola still held over his shoulder.

Steve and Bucky scrambled to their feet and followed Clint’s sprinting form down the hallway while the whole mountain shook around them.


	10. Chapter Nine

**CHAPTER NINE::**

Bruce checked his pocket watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. The deck was icy, the air was cold and wet, and Bruce was miserable without a shirt, but he wanted to be ready in case he needed to leap off the side of the ship. Other than the brief spatter of gunfire when the crew first broke through the mountainside, it had been eerily quiet.

“They’ve got two minutes,” Bruce said, casting a worried glance at Rhodey. He looked back at the quiet mountain. They’d been expecting an attack for almost an hour and none had come. It was strange and disconcerting – there hadn’t even been any automated sentries.

“They’ll make it out,” Rhodey said, but his lips were tight, his eyes keeping a careful watch on the instruments.

Bruce paced the length of the foredeck, eyes going back to the hole in the side of the mountain. They were above it and far enough out that anyone shooting at them from the convenient opening would have a hard time hitting anything, but that just meant it would take them longer to get into position when the crew needed to be off the mountain. He took his pocket watch back out and clicked it open.

“They’re late,” he announced. “I should go in there.”

“Do you really want to be trapped in a system of tunnels and caves, Dr. Banner?” Rhodey replied evenly, but the muscles in his neck strained with tension. “Come take the wh-”

“Huggybear, tell me you haven’t made a grocery run!” Tony interrupted, his voice exploding out of the communications mirror. Bruce hurried up the stairs and around the console.

“Tony, where are you?” Rhodey asked, already moving the ship back toward the opening.

“We’re coming in fast and hot, and we’re going to need to be off this mountain about two minutes ago. Think you can manage that?”

“Sure,” Rhodey answered, “I’ll just go ahead and bend time for you.”

Bruce didn’t wait for any further bantering. He clattered down the stairs and below decks, crashing into the walls in his hurry to get to the gig bay. The small ship was already prepped, and all Bruce had to do was get into the pilot’s riggin. He flicked his hands over the controls, keying the escape hatch open just an instant before releasing the ship from its mooring. He dropped through the bay doors like a stone, his pulse kicking up at the familiar feeling of falling.

“ _NO,_ ” Bruce said sharply, clenching his teeth. “NO, NOT RIGHT NOW.”

He could feel his tattoos rising, but he ignored the heat, spreading the wings out with a swipe of his hands and catching an updraft. He fired the thrusters, zipping out from under _The Iron Avenger_ to bring the ship level with the hole in the mountainside. Bruce took in quick breaths though his nose, struggling against the rising heat under his skin. The entire mountain trembled and rippled. Bruce stared at it in horror. Another great shudder went through it, rocks shaking loose. He nudged the controls to avoid a falling bolder and stared at the opening, willing the crew to appear.

Clint materialized in the opening as if summoned, leaping from the hole without even checking to make sure the gig was positioned to catch him. He rolled hard down the center aisle and pitched up against Bruce’s seat.

“Take the controls,” Bruce gritted out, “Take them now!” He struggled to free himself from the pilot’s rigging, growing quickly frustrated the more tangled he got in the straps. Clint reached over to free him as Natasha made it through the hole, followed quickly by Tony, flying out with a body over his shoulder, Steve, and –

“Behind you!” Bruce shouted, pointing at the assassin following fast on Steve’s heels. His tattoos exploded across his skin, washing him in heat. Clint shoved him hastily out of the pilot’s seat and Natasha tackled him into one of the passenger seats, landing in his lap.

“He’s on our side, Dr. Banner,” she said, fast and intense, “The sun is getting real low. It’s time to rest now,” she told him, holding her hand up.

Bruce struggled through the heat and the panic to understand her words. He saw her hand up and reached out to her, matching their palms together. He could feel her pulse against his skin, and when he looked up, her eyes were steady and unafraid on his.

“It’s time to rest now,” she repeated.

The heat receded. Bruce shifted uncomfortably in the chair, struggling under the ache. She took his face in both of her hands and held him still, locking their gazes together.

“It’s time to rest now.”

Bruce released an explosive breath that left him panting. He looked around the gig to see Tony standing in the middle of the walkway, prepared to drag Bruce overboard if he had to. Behind him, Steve had forced the assassin back into a corner and was either restraining him, or shielding him, or both.

“You good, Jolly Green?” Tony asked, flipping the faceplate up.

Swallowing to moisten his throat, Bruce nodded. “I’m good. Want to explain why we’re adopting the man who’s been trying to kill us?”

“Sorry about that,” the assassin said from under Steve’s arm, his voice exhausted, but lips pulled up in a grimacing smile. “If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t actually trying to kill _you_.”

“Oh,” Bruce said. He glared. “Well, since you weren’t trying to kill _me_ specifically, I guess everything is fine!”

The man winced and turned to look over the side of the gig, back to the mountain. His metal arm caught the weak sunlight and reflecting it back, making the blue star on his shoulder glow. It took Bruce another several seconds to realize that it was Bucky, the man they were out trying to save in the first place. He made an unhappy noise and rubbed at his forehead to relax the growing headache.

Behind them, the mountain roared and half of the face collapsed inward, sending up a great plume of dust and debris. There was nothing they could do but watch it fall apart.

“When you said you were going to tear the mountain down,” Natasha said tiredly, “I didn’t think you meant it literally.”

~*~

A strained silence fell on the ship as they set course for New York with Rhodey at the helm. Steve looked over the exhausted team and felt a floundering desire to just get them all fed and tucked into their bunks. His eyes kept darting to Bucky to make sure he was still there, unable to stop himself from categorizing every unfamiliar scar, bruise, and cut. Bucky met his gaze every time, but he was obviously giving into exhaustion quickly.

“You better lock me up,” Bucky said after several long moments of the crew standing around the helm, staring at the dust-clouded skyline. “I’m probably not going to be conscious much longer. Can’t say what’ll happen when I wake up in an unfamiliar place.”

“This isn’t a prison ship,” Tony told him sharply.

“But we can put you in the Hulk’s room, for everyone’s safety,” Bruce added when Bucky just gave Tony an assessing look. “We’ll get a mattress out of one of the cabins.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Steve asked uncertainly. So many conflicting desires were building in his chest that he didn’t know what he wanted more – to curl up with Bucky, to beg Tony for a place on his floor, or to just lock himself in his own cabin and not come out for a week.

Bucky shook his head, shoulders slumping and eyelids struggling to stay open. “Better not, yet.”

“I’ll take you to a shower,” Clint offered after another moment of surreal quiet. “I’m sure we could all use one along with some food.”

Natasha, standing stoically at Tony’s side where she’d been since they’d made it back aboard the ship, nodded and offered, “I’ll take care of food.”

“You have a problem with my after-battle peanut butter and pickle sandwiches?” Clint demanded.

“Everyone has a problem with your after-battle peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.”

It wasn’t lost on Steve that the two agents moved to flank Bucky as they spoke. He wanted to protest treating him like a danger, but Bucky _was_ a danger. Whatever had been done to him, whatever Hydra had put him through, he wasn’t the same man Steve had grown up with. There was a frightening animal alienness in his eyes that made Steve feel jumpy whenever their gazes met. He didn’t know what he’d expected to feel when he was reunited with his friend, but the sense of staring at a stranger was not it.

“I’ll see you when you wake up,” Steve said finally. He watched in a tearing sort of agony as Bucky nodded and compliantly followed after the two SHIELD agents. He didn’t even seem to notice that they’d taken up guard positions around him, and it made Steve’s heart ache.

“You could probably use a shower and some sleep yourself, Captain,” Bruce prompted. “I’ll take care of our… guest,” he said, giving Zola an uncertain look, “And make sure he’s comfortable where he can’t make any trouble.

Steve dragged his eyes away from the stairs, and nodded. He flickered his gaze over to Tony, but Tony didn’t meet his eyes. He looked over to Rhodey and asked, “You okay at the helm?”

“I’m not the one who was running around collapsing mountains today,” Rhodey quipped in response. Tony gave him a rude hand sign and Rhodey just smiled at him as he turned and made his way to the hatch. He was still in the armor and moving slowly.

“Go with him,” Bruce suggested, nudging at Steve’s side with one finger. He nodded toward Tony. “He might need help, and he’s not going to ask.”

“Don’t leave him alone tonight, Captain,” Rhodey ordered before Steve could move, “If you can’t stay with him, you come get me.”

“I don’t think Tony would appreciate you making a fuss over him,” Steve said, but the only thing that could possibly drag him away from Tony’s side was Bucky, and Bucky looked fit to sleep for a month and then some.

“Someone has to,” Rhodey said softly. He met Steve’s eyes in an intense gaze. “You might be a super soldier and a national icon,” he said, “But believe me when I say that I can get creative when I’m motivated. I suggest you don’t motivate me.”

Steve looked at him carefully. He probably should have been insulted by the implication, but it just made him feel warm that Tony had someone who loved him so much. He offered Rhodey his hand, and didn’t try to crush his fingers as their palms met. “You’re not a man I want to make an enemy of, sir.”

“That’s good,” Rhodey said, nodding, “Because it would break my heart to have to kill you, Captain.”

He knew he should follow immediately after Tony, but Steve needed a moment to collect himself. He picked up a dazed Zola, and helped Bruce get the scientist down to the lab. The energy drop after the fight was hitting him hard, making him feel both completely drained and antsy with left-over aggression, but he wasn’t about to leave Bruce alone with Zola, no matter how harmless he looked. Bruce checked him for a concussion, treated a cut on his head, and had Steve strip him out of his suit when Zola just stared blankly at the wall. Steve was forced to redress the man in pajamas once Bruce was sure he wasn’t concealing anything dangerous, and they locked him into one of the ‘guest’ cabins. Despite Tony’s claims that it wasn’t a prison ship, it looked a whole lot like a cell to Steve.

Natasha met them in the hall with a tray of food – eggs, pasta in white sauce, left over shrimp from the night before, bread – and pushed it into his chest. “Make sure Stark eats,” she said. She opened her mouth as if to continue speaking, but frowned and closed it. “And take a shower. You’re still covered in blood.”

Steve understood immediately that it wasn’t what she’d been about to say, but he didn’t push her. Something had happened in the mountain to change the relationship she had with Tony, and he found that he was at once both curious, and afraid to ask what it had been. In his brief acquaintance with Natasha Romanov, she didn’t strike him as the kind of person who impressed easily.

Tony made an unintelligible sound that Steve chose to interpret as, “Come in,” when he knocked on the door. He stopped in the doorway, staring down at Tony stretched out on the floor, panting in harsh, uneven breaths. The armor was partially drawn in, only his head, chest, and right arm bare. The tattoos still glowed on his skin, pulsing deep orange with every breath. Tony looked up at him tiredly.

“Close the hatch at least,” he breathed finally, voice rough.

Steve closed the hatch, set the tray down on the bed, and knelt at Tony’s side. “Are you alright?”

“Just peachy,” Tony answered, but he was obviously too tired to put the energy into being sarcastic. “Armor was damaged. Have to wait for it to heal.”

Looking over the glistening plates of metal, Steve pinpointed each dent and scratch. There were a lot of them. “Can I help?”

“Nope,” Tony answered, but then rolled his head toward the bed and amended, “Pillow?”

Steve collected the requested pillow and helped him arrange it under his head. Up close, Steve could see bruises forming wherever his skin was exposed, angry red marks where he’d been hit with bullets. Steve could only guess what the marks left by Schmidt would look like. He’d only seen the tail end of their fight, but it looked like Schmidt had commanded one mean right hook.

Steve put his back to the bedside table and reached up to take the bread down. He tore off a piece and held it in front of Tony’s lips. Tony gave him a sideways look, but he opened his mouth to accept the tidbit, chewed, swallowed, and took the next without complaint. Steve fed him pasta one noodle at a time, and pinched the tails off the shrimp before holding them out. Tony started to fade within ten minutes, his jaw working more slowly as he chewed, his throat working harder to swallow. Steve took a few drinks of water, holding the last mouthful on his tongue so he could lean down to offer Tony a drink. Tony accepted it, but then laughed weakly.

“You really are a mother hen,” he said finally.

“Just be happy it’s not liquefied worms,” Steve agreed. Tony’s lips parted to respond, but he was asleep in the next breath, head lulling to one side.

Steve stayed on the floor with him until he’d finished eating, and then stood. There was a shower one deck down, but Steve didn’t want to leave the room with Tony so obviously vulnerable. He stripped out of his filthy uniform jacket, running his fingers over the tears and stains to gage if it could be repaired. He should probably update it anyway, give the uniform over to the Smithsonian display and let Coulson design him a new one he’d been casually insisting on for months, but Steve was reluctant to part with it.

Folding the jacket over the back of Tony’s chair, he pulled off the rest of his clothing, and then poured a basin of water from the small tank standing in the corner. A construct on the side of the basin heated the water in a matter of moments. Steve waited just until it had started to steam and then dipped a cloth in it and ran it over his neck. His uniform and face had taken the worst of grit, but the water was a murky dark gray by the time he finished his chest. He dumped it down the drain and started over, repeating the process twice before he finally felt clean. He brushed his hair out, tied it up in a loose bun, and filled the basin one more time.

Tony’s left hand and both of his feet were exposed when he turned around. Comfortably naked, Steve sat back at his side and gently worked the cloth over his skin, being careful of both bruises and tattoos alike. The tattoos pulsed brighter wherever he touched, but Tony didn’t so much as stir, so he guessed that they didn’t hurt. He traced the edges of the armor as it receded, watching the process with curious concern. Tony’s skin was bright red for several seconds after the armor drew in – Steve had noticed it before, but he’d thought it was just the color of the armor still visible on his skin. Examining it closer, it looked more like a burn.

“If you’re aiming for my crotch, you’re off by about a foot,” Tony commented sleepily into the silence.

Steve jumped guiltily, realizing that his nose was less a two inches from Tony’s hip as he watched the armor pull into his skin. “Does this hurt?” he asked, drifting a hand just at the edge of where the armor burrowed into Tony’s flesh.

“Well it doesn’t feel _good_ ,” Tony answered. Steve noticed the evasion, but he didn’t push. He sat back against the bedside table and looked down at Tony. Even after just an hour’s sleep, he looked significantly better, some of the pain lines eased around his eyes and mouth.

“I’m surprised you’re not with Barnes,” Tony said after a second.          

Steve considered how to answer and quickly dismissed _he didn’t want me there_. It was the truth, but it would be a mistake to phrase it that way, as if he was only in Tony’s cabin because Bucky wasn’t available, which was _not_ the truth. “Captain’s orders,” Steve said instead, “Be in the cabin by eighteen hundred.”

Tony let out a startled a laugh. “I gave you a pretty shitty curfew.”

“It _is_ a little strict,” Steve agreed. He reached down and carded his fingers through Tony’s hair as the armor sank in over his hips. He didn’t miss the way Tony’s body went tense and his breathing went very shallow and even. He continued to pet Tony’s hair until the last of the gleaming metal had withdrawn, leaving him in nothing but his tattoos.

Steve drifted one finger over a series of concentric circles topped by four squares turned at angles. The tattoo pulsed under his hand like a living thing, and started to fade.

“You’ve never asked,” Tony observed once he got his breath back. The tattoos withdrew all over his body, leaving him pale and faintly misted with sweat. “About the tattoos…the reactor.”

Steve took his hand away from Tony’s shoulder and picked up the cloth again. The construct on the basin had kept the water warm and Tony shuddered as Steve wiped down his chest. “It seemed like something you didn’t want to talk about,” Steve said finally. “I figured you would tell me if you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to,” Tony said.

“That’s fine.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, Steve picking up each of Tony’s hands to clean his fingers. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence, but it wasn’t charged with the same tension they’d been living under since Paris. Steve glanced up at his face and then sucked one of Tony’s fingers into his mouth. Tony’s lips parted on a soft groan, his eyes flickering shut. Steve was so enamored with the reaction that he paid the same attention to each finger on both hands, moving to kneel between Tony’s thighs to reach the other hand.

Tony kicked weakly at the floor, shifting and lifting his hips to the cadence of Steve’s mouth moving on him. Steve held his wrist down when he tried to grab himself, gratified when Tony’s thrashing only increased. He released Tony’s middle finger with a soft _pop_ and stared down at him. Tony’s eyes slitted open and he stared back, cheeks flushed and lower lip swollen where he’d bitten into it. Steve waited until Tony stopped struggling to move, and then leaned down and ran his tongue up the length of Tony’s hard shaft. He might have teased him if they hadn’t just barely escaped a collapsing mountain, but Steve didn’t have the patience just then for teasing. He slid one hand under Tony’s length to lift it off his stomach, and then worked his mouth straight down, relaxing his throat until his lips touched his own fingers circled at the base of Tony’s cock. Tony cussed and went very still, muscles trembling faintly. Steve swallowed around his length and then lifted back up, and slid slowly back down. They picked up a rhythm like breathing, Steve equal parts amused and gratified when the rise and fall of Tony’s chest matched his pace.

He lost track of time, knew only the smell of Tony’s body, the sound of his breath, the tiny whimpers like prayers, and so he was startled when Tony’s hand tightened abruptly in his hair, tugging in warning. Steve looked up at him through his lashes and stayed where he was, kept up the same inexorable pace. Tony tried to keep eye contact, but his eyes started water, drifted slowly closed, and then he arched backwards. The motion carried from his neck to his hips, thrusting up against the back of Steve’s throat as he came in three long pulses. Steve backed off far enough to swallow, reaching one hand under Tony's hips to support him while he trembled with aftershocks, and then gently let him down.

“That,” Tony croaked, “Was also not your first time.”

Steve sat back on his heels and couldn’t wipe the smug smile off his face as he brushed his thumb over the corners of his lips. “Disappointed?” he asked.

“So, _so_ very disappointed.” Tony put a hand briefly over his eyes, parting two fingers to peer up at him. “Come here.”

Steve shifted to the side and laid down so he could set his head on Tony’s shoulder. Tony automatically curled his arm around Steve’s shoulders, but he reached above his head with the opposite hand to open the nightstand drawer. His stomach muscles flexed, but he didn’t get more than an inch off the floor before he gave up.

“Clear bottle,” he said, flicking his hand toward the drawer.

Steve propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “You can barely move.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, “So obviously I need some entertainment. Clear bottle.”

Steve stretched up far enough to see into the drawer and retrieved a tapered glass bottle of clear liquid. It smelled like sandalwood and felt like silk on his fingers. Tony pushed at his stomach until he moved to put his back to the bed, legs spread unselfconsciously, Tony’s eyes just making him feel warmer. He poured a small amount of the lubricant into his palm and skimmed his hand down his length experimentally. He sucked in a startled breath at the sensation, and Tony chuckled.

“Is it…? Getting warmer?” Steve asked, baffled, as he passed his hand over himself again. Tony hummed in a pleased affirmative and prodded Steve’s knee out of his line of sight. Steve let his head fall back against the bed and arched into his own hand. If he closed his eyes, it almost felt like the wet heat of a woman’s body wrapped around him. He made a soft sound against his teeth and bit into his unoccupied fist, bracing his heels against the floor for the leverage to push upward.

It didn’t take long, coming down from the battle high and the adrenaline, with Tony’s taste still lingering on the back of his tongue. He sucked in fast breaths, focusing on the tingling across his stomach. He bit hard into his fist to stifle his sounds as he came, making a mess of his stomach and chest. His legs gave out immediately, and crashed back to the floor, still jerking in the last grasp of his orgasm. Steve’s breath calmed slowly, and he opened his eyes to find that Tony had rolled onto his side to watch him.

“You could do porn,” Tony observed after a moment, breaking the heavy silence.

Steve laughed, dropping his head back to the mattress. He lifted a hand to scrub at his face and just barely stopped before dragging his own semen across his cheeks. Tony hummed in amused pleasure.

“Seriously, you’re a natural.”

“I guess if the Captain America gig doesn’t work out, I’ll keep it in mind.”

They fell quiet while Steve recovered, fishing the cloth out of the basin to clean himself up. He was just opening his mouth to suggest that they move to the bed, when Tony closed his eyes and said, “They held me there.”

Steve froze, the cloth quickly cooling on his stomach. He was careful not to move or make a noise, just waited for Tony to continue if he wanted.

“I was in France doing a product demonstration. Things went wrong, yadda, yadda, and I woke up in a c-cell.” Tony twitched his head, drew his lips in and chewed at them for a second. He opened his eyes, his expression dangerously blank. “I’d been injured in the crash, shrapnel in my chest. Yinsen – a doctor they had there – managed to save my life.” He reached up and touched the reactor, clicking his fingernails on it. “He burned a construct into my ribs to keep the shrapnel away from my heart. I did this later. More efficient.”

His eyes flickered up to Steve, and then away. “Long story short, they wanted me to build something for them – surprise, surprise, not many other reasons to kidnap Tony Stark – and I didn’t want to build it. So, I made my body a construct, built the armor and fused it to my bones. I escaped. Yinsen didn’t. I killed a lot of them on my way out, but I didn’t get to Schmidt.” He cleared his throat. “I was so fucked up when I got out that I lost three days. I don’t remember, just wandering through the countryside, I guess. Rhodey found me, brought me home.”

“See,” he said, looking up at Steve and finally holding his gaze, “The thing is… it wasn’t a coincidence, them just happening to take my ship. Someone gave me away. Someone has been using my work to cause a lot of death, and pain, and suffering. And I spent a lot of my life being… being a frivolous playboy, irresponsible brat. I didn’t think it came back to me, what people did with my weapons. I just made them, after all – it’s not my fault if someone uses them.” He laughed derisively, lips like a red slash in his pale face. “But it does matter. It _is_ my responsibility – I’m accountable to that death toll. So Hydra hurt me, and I’ve made it my life to hurt them back.”

Tony shrugged, the movement awkward from his position curled on his side. “And now Schmidt is dead, and it looks like there was just… there was even _more_ going on than I thought. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. And I’m just so. Damn tired.”

He stopped talking and tilted his chin down, eyes suspiciously bright under the cabin lights. Steve moved slowly, gathering him up in his arms and holding him to his chest.

“I don’t have any answers for you,” Steve said finally, “But just know that you’re not alone. That whatever needs to be done, you have a team who are here to support you. You have me.”

~*~

“You know he is going to use some kind of code to get word out to his Hydra buddies, right?” Clint asked, standing at the railing and peering down the gangplank where the press were arranging themselves in chairs set out on the dock. Tony had erected windshields around the aeroport dock rather than hold the conference on the ground, and they were just waiting for the last few reporters to arrive.

“Of course he is,” Natasha agreed, pulling him away from the railing when the photographers caught sight of him and started snapping pictures. “It will make our life easier if they come to us rather than having to hunt them down.”

“You think we’re going to be off hunting down Hydra after this?”

Natasha quirked an eyebrow at him. “You think we’re _not_?”

Clint was quiet for a moment, and then slowly observed, “This will start a war.”

“The war is already coming,” Rhodey said with a sigh. He straightened his jacket. “We all know it. Hydra tried to kick it off when they attacked the ambassador, Hitler has been spoiling for a reason to start a fight for years now.”

As much as it was the truth, Clint didn’t like it. He’d been only thirteen when the Great War ended. It had claimed his brother’s life, leaving him alone and angry, taking on more and more dangerous acts for the show, drinking, fighting, or fucking whenever the occasion called for it. He got himself into a lot of trouble until Phil pulled him out by the scruff of his neck. The thought of another Great War made him feel anxious and sick. “Do we really want to put _Zola_ at the forefront of that?”

“We could just throw him overboard somewhere around twenty-five thousand feet,” Bucky suggested, not for the first time. Dressed in a blue suit and a pair of dark brown gloves, his hair pulled neatly back from his face, and clean-shaven, he looked like a completely different person. The fancy grooming didn’t hide how dangerous he was, though, and he still made Clint uneasy.

“Mr. Zola is aware that if he does anything off script, we’re going to lock him in the Hulk bay, and give you the button to open the doors,” Natasha explained nonchalantly. Rhodey snorted, obviously thinking she was joking. Bucky grinned, obviously aware that she wasn’t.

Rhodey checked his pocket watch. “Let’s get started, and then get out of here. As soon as this hits the broadcasters, there will be absolute chaos. If we want our German friend to survive long enough to be bait, we better not be within city limits when it does.”

Clint nodded in agreement – the part of him that had been a SHIELD agent for twelve years was inclined to stay to help manage the fallout, but after the week they’d had, he’d damn well done his part for the greater good and deserved to see his own kitchen. He crossed the deck to the hatch and rapped his knuckles on it. Steve pushed the door open, and nodded when Clint waved him out. He took a firm grip on Zola’s arm and frog-marched him onto the deck.

Tony followed behind a moment later, looking somber and pale in his dark suit. It had been one drawn out forty-eight hour argument on the trip back from the Hydra base to convince Tony that the information needed to be released as quickly as possible to as many people as possible. Clint had been surprised by his resistance, especially since information bombs via press conferences were Tony’s favorite manifestation of the adage _the best defense is a good offense_ , but the stakes were higher. People would die, and as much as Tony put on a good act of caring only for himself, Clint understood how deeply the death tolls hit him.

Telling the world what Hydra, and by extension Hitler, had been up to in their mountain strongholds would mean war, and a lot of little brothers left alone in the wake of it. Tony was quiet as he stood on the deck reading over the note cards Natasha had written for him, and Clint could tell that he wanted to be absolutely anywhere other than where he was – Clint didn’t blame him.

“You remember what we talked about, Mr. Zola?” Steve asked, his words polite, but his voice as filled with venom as Clint had ever heard.

To his credit, Zola didn’t cower, but Clint guessed that he must have been used to being intimidated by scary men after spending so much time with Schmidt. Adjusting his glasses, Zola said, “Yes, Captain Rogers, I understand my position very clearly, trust me.”

“Trust is not something you’re ever going to get out of me,” Steve said, but he let Tony get past them and then followed with the scientist firmly in hand. Bruce, as usual, remained below decks. Putting him out in front of the media was never a good idea.

Rhodey reached out to Tony as he passed, but Tony sidestepped him without looking him in the face. Rhodey moved like he wanted to follow, but he would be in sight of the photographers if he stepped any further out onto the deck. Tony went down the gangplank first, followed by Steve and Zola, and then Clint and Natasha. To keep any claims of sanctioned US involvement to a minimum, Rhodey remained behind in the relative safety of the sheltered foredeck with Bucky. Clint would have loved to stay behind as well, but Natasha reached out and grabbed him by the elbow before he managed more than a pause in his progress.

He sighed, and positioned himself to stand still and look intimidating behind Zola as Tony Stark once again threw the world into chaos with a press conference.

~*~

Pepper waited on the dock with Jarvis at her side. She held a stack of newspapers cradled in her arms, and she was so sick with worry and fear that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss Tony, or throw him off the roof. _The Iron Avenger_ pulled up to the dock smoothly, Tony at the helm, and the rest of the crew waiting eagerly at the railing. Her eyes fastened in on the diminutive scientist and she glanced down at the top paper, as if she could ever forget that face. Even without the picture, she would have known him immediately just from the way Tony had described him on those bad nights.

The gangplank lowered and Rhodey came down first with Zola held by one arm. Pepper waited while they crossed the dock, Zola moving slowly to accommodate the leg shackles. She watched the rest of the crew as they disembarked, every one of them looking worse for wear. She noted Bucky walking beside Steve, but gave him only a cursory glance. Tony was at the helm, unreadable as he secured the ship to the dock with his body intentionally angled away from her, but she read the distress in the angle of his shoulders. Rhodey slowed helpful as he approached her. She looked straight in Zola’s watery blue eyes, and slapped him across the face hard enough to make her hand sting. Jarvis let her get in one hit, and then put a restraining a hand on her arm. Rhodey pulled Zola back, but he was slow doing it, and his expression read only approval.

“You better hope that SHIELD buries you under another mountain,” she said softly, and didn’t continue. The force of her hatred for the man surprised her, and she didn’t think there was much she was incapable of when it came to him. She also didn’t think she would lose a minute’s worth of sleep if he were to accidentally trip and fall off the dock.

“I don’t suggestion you speak, Zola,” Rhodey warned him when he opened his mouth to retort. Zola closed his mouth, but he glared sullenly at Pepper as Rhodey pulled him past her. Natasha stopped to give her a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek, and Clint did the same, both of them greeting Jarvis warmly, despite their obviously exhaustion. Bruce made his normal greeting, an awkward sort of bow, and a skittish handshake. It had taken him almost a year before he would do more than wave to her from a safe distance, so Pepper summoned up a smile for him. Steve nodded to her, staying cautiously between her and his friend.

“It’s nice to have you back, Captain. You must be Bucky,” Pepper greeted, ignoring the wariness in Steve’s eyes. She held her hand out and Bucky took it in a strong grip. His hands were rough, but warm and dry, and he gave her a nice smile.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he greeted. He offered his hand to Jarvis as well, introducing himself with the briefest of pauses, like he was summoning up a name he could only barely remember.

“He’s more polite than you are, Captain,” Pepper said, struggling to keep up the pleasant façade when Tony still hadn’t left the ship.

“I’m sorry, Pepper,” Steve apologized, smiling sweetly. “How are you?”

“Well,” Pepper hedged, because she couldn’t make herself say she was okay, “It’s been a hard a week for us all.”

Steve winced and nodded. He glanced behind him at Tony, finally leaving the wheel and making his way down the stairs. “I’ll let you two catch up. It’s good to see you again,” Steve said, putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and nudging him toward the door.

Tony took his sweet time making his way down the gangplank and across the deck. He walked carefully, the way he always did after a long trip spent in the air, getting his land legs back. Pepper let him go at his own pace, but flung her free arm around his neck as soon as he was close enough.

“You stupid, reckless man, I’ve been so worried!” she blurted out, “Did you really have to _break Europe_ while you were gone, Tony?”

“I’ve always thought it was weird that Europe and Asia are considered two continents even though they’re not separated by an ocean,” Tony answered nonsensically, “So breaking it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. At least there will be less confusion in third grade geography classes.”

Sobbing and laughing at the same time, she squeezed him tightly and put her face against his neck. He smelled like the wind, and his coat needed to be washed, but he felt good in her arms. It took him a second, but he finally put his arms around her waist and held her tightly. Pepper felt Jarvis’s arms come around them both, and it was so much like home that it nearly broke her heart.

Pulling away and quickly dashing the tears off her cheeks, she held the papers out. “Do you know what kind of a mess you’ve made? _Hitler Denies Involvement with Hydra, Tony Stark declares war on Germany, It’s War for Germany and France, Great Britain to Declare War on Germany, Secret US Attack on German Soil!_ What were you thinking?”

Tony just stared at the papers in her hands. He’d gone even paler as she read off headlines, and she stopped suddenly, recognizing the brittleness in his wide-eyed expression.

“It had to be done,” Tony said softly, “If we'd given the information to SHIELD, or the French government, they would have just covered it up.”

He wouldn’t look her in the eyes, and Pepper chided herself for bombarding him. It was hard for her to keep all the fear and anxiety to herself when worrying about Tony was like carrying a lead ball in her stomach. She put her hand on Tony’s face and tilted it to look at her.

“You did the right thing,” she said finally, “I just wish you’d given me more warning, because our stocks are going crazy,” she said, her voice thick through tears, “And I didn’t even know when to expect you home, even Obie has been so worried, and some jerk from the French consulate called and told us that we had to hand you over as soon as you landed, and I was worried that you weren’t going to make it out of Paris at all, and you didn’t even _call_ , Tony, you could have called!”

Pepper ran out of words at the same time she ran out of air and she stared at Tony, breathing hard and messing up her makeup with the tears. She didn’t think he’d ever let her get through a whole rant without talking into her sentences, derailing her, redirecting her, calming her down with his soft jokes. She almost slapped him, just to make him speak. This quiet Tony unnerved her and she was worried for him.

“What did you tell the jerk at the consulate?” he asked finally, lips pulling up into a ghostly shadow of a smile.

“Jarvis took the call,” Pepper answered, pointing up at him and trying to wipe the tears off her face without ruining her make up even further.

“I politely told them you were an American citizen, and they could take it up with the home office.”

“He told them to fuck off,” Pepper corrected, finally getting a real smile out of Tony.

“Jarvis, is that true?” Tony asked, affecting a scandalized expression.

“Perhaps I was less polite than usual, my apologies, sir,” Jarvis said without sounding apologetic in the least.

Drawing in a breath, Pepper stepped out of the collective embrace and nudged Tony toward the door. He looked like he needed a hot meal, and about a month’s worth of sleep. If they moved fast enough, they could at least get the meal in him, but she wasn’t hopeful about the sleep, not with the haunted look on his face. “So,” Pepper said as they walked, trying to grab onto anything normal, “Steve?”

Tony’s smile was genuine and mischievous as he answered, “Has no gag reflex.”

“Is it really polite to speak of your lover that way, sir?” Jarvis asked with a long-suffering sigh. Despite his chiding tone, Pepper recognized the cautious happiness in his eyes. She wasn’t as sure herself if Captain America was a good choice for the man who grew up idolizing him, but Tony had been painfully alone since Rhodey found him wandering the German countryside. Steve Rogers might not be his Forever, but she couldn’t help being happy that he’d let someone get close to him.

Pepper settled him down to a hearty meal. They’d set the table out for the entire crew, but only Steve, Bucky, and Bruce remained. Rhodey had understandably left immediately with his prisoner, and Pepper had no idea where the two SHIELD agents had disappeared to, but she didn’t blame them for wanting some space. She was both surprised and concerned when Tony ate without a fuss, barely speaking, and then went straight to bed without Pepper having to drag him there.

“He’s upset about the press conference,” Bruce confided after Tony’s door closed down the hall. “We all are, and I haven’t even looked at the papers yet.” His eyes flickered to the stack and Pepper mutely pushed them across the table.

Steve’s eyes were still on the hallway to Tony’s bedroom, brows curled together in a worried frown. “We had to get the information out,” he said, but he didn’t sound any happier about it than Tony had.

“If I may, sir?” Jarvis broke in gently, “What has been done, has been done. Those choices cannot be unmade. All you may do now, is accept that those choices have consequences and move forward.”

Nudging Steve with his elbow, Bucky said, “Your ma would’ve loved this guy.”

~*~

Pepper leaned back in a chair with a groan, rubbing at her neck. “I knew I should have paid more attention to my German lessons,” she complained. Bruce had helped her get all of the documents they’d gathered from the bases out of the ship, and she was trying, unsuccessfully, to sort through them for relevancy. Sitting across from her with his reading glasses perched on his nose, Jarvis was having significantly better luck.

“We will most likely have to ask Captain Rogers or Miss Romanov for assistance,” he agreed, setting the document down on a pile and picking up the next one. “I understand that they paid significantly better attention in _their_ German lessons.” He gave her a significant look over the rim of his glasses. Pepper only barely resisted the impulse to stick her tongue out at him.

“I bet Bucky would be able to help,” she muttered thoughtfully, picking up another file marked _Schmidt’s office_ in Bruce’s neat handwriting. “Do you think he would?” she asked, looking up at Jarvis.

Jarvis’ lips thinned into a narrow line. He removed his glasses and inspected them carefully while he thought. “I do not know, Miss Potts,” he said finally. “He seems a likeable sort, but his behavior is wildly outside of the behavior witnessed by the team earlier in the week. While I am loathe to speak ill of Captain Rogers’ friend, I think it would be wise to keep a very close eye on him.”

“He _did_ shoot Tony in the head,” Pepper agreed, “Usually that would be an automatic out in my book.”

“Indeed.” Jarvis stifled a yawn with one hand and slid his reading glasses into his breast pocket. “Would you like some cocoa, Miss Potts?”

“Depends,” Pepper said thoughtfully, “On if you have cream.”

Jarvis gave her an offended look. “Do I ever not?”

Smiling triumphantly, Pepper replied, “And have I ever said no to cocoa?”

“Touché,” Jarvis allowed, standing and heading for the kitchen. She listened to the soothingly familiar sounds of him moving around the stove, flipping idly through the file and scanning the pages for words she knew. Most of the pages in the file were handwritten, so it was even more difficult than usual, but she finally determined that they were personal correspondence, or maybe drafts of personal correspondence.

Jarvis returned several minutes later with two mugs of warm cocoa, fresh cream floating enticingly on top, sprinkled with cinnamon, and a peppermint stick set on the side. She dropped the file to the table and reached out for the mug gratefully. They really should have left the files until they had someone fluent in German to help, but Pepper had been too keyed up with anxiety and wanting to _do_ something that she’d latched onto it as familiar ground.

The file spilled onto the table when it hit and Pepper caught a familiar word out of the corner of her eye. She took a cautious sip of her cocoa and set the cup down to fish the page out.

“This one is in English… looks like a draft of a letter,” she said, frowning. She read the first few lines, and the blood drained out of her face so fast that she thought she was going to faint. Jarvis hurried around the table to put a steadying hand on her arm. Pepper reached out blindly to rest her fingertips on his chest, too shocked to even speak for fear that she would throw up if she opened her mouth.

Jarvis took the document from her and put his glassed back on. He started reading aloud, “You have attempted to mislead me. It was a noble attempt, but understand that you have been found out. As if I would not recognize the person of Anthony Stark. Be assured, Mr. Stane, that we have-” He stopped and stared down at the letter. “Good heavens.”

“It’s Obadiah,” Pepper breathed. “He’s the leak.” She jolted upright in her chair, her hand over her mouth. “I called him as soon as the ship came in! He knows that Tony is back in town!”

~*~

The penthouse apartment was dark when Tony opened the door. After the day’s long nap, Tony had spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in his workshop. It was nearly three in the morning, and he was tired, but the thought of sleep terrified him. Every time he closed his eyes, he was transported back to his blue-gray cell, the isolation chamber, the trough in the bathroom, and the massacre in the cave.

“Stop it,” he told himself firmly. He crossed the room the bar and poured himself a drink, but just stood with it in his hand. He didn’t drink at all when they were in the air, and the alcohol was one of the few things that blotted out the nightmares and the ache in his bones long enough for him to sleep, so it meant a lot of sleepless nights when aloft, and –usually – getting very drunk as soon as they landed. He eyed the amber liquid in the crystal tumbler, and then swallowed it in one shot. The forty year-old single malt was smooth going down, and it left a pleasant warmth behind in his chest. He poured another moderate dose and left the decanter on the table as he passed to the living room.

“Welcome home,” he told the glass, taking a slow sip and letting it sit on his tongue. His mind kept circulating over the newspaper headlines – War, War, War – and he knew that there had already been deaths. Even as they’d hustled Zola back onto the ship and lifted away from the dock, the first ripples of agitation were flowing outward. A judicious ear to the ground in London revealed that riots had broken out all over the city, and the German embassy had been pelted with Molotov cocktails. He didn’t know if the ambassador had made it out alive, but the man was a member of Hydra himself, and Tony wasn’t sure if he had it in him to care. It frightened him, that lack of concern. It was lack of concern that led to him being held captive in a Hydra cell in the first place, lack of concern that let a traitor grow right under his nose, supplying criminal organizations with weapons and constructs that put Tony’s name firmly on the deaths of thousands.

A knock at the door interrupted him before he could spiral too much further down that dark path. He squinted up at the clock on the wall to confirm that yes, it was three in the morning and not three in the afternoon, and set his glass down. He opened the door cautiously and blinked.

“Obie?”

Nudging the door open with his elbow, Obie pushed into the room and folded his big arms around Tony’s shoulders. Tony shuddered faintly – he didn’t liked to be held that way, but there was no use telling Obie that he had developed new physical boundaries since he was seven. Obie let him go, but then grabbed him by both shoulders.

“Are you alright, son?” he asked, frowning with concern as he ducked to look at Tony’s eyes. “Have you been drinking?”

Tony finally pulled away. “Want some?” he asked instead of answering. He made a gesture to the bottle where it sat on the table, making a mental note to put it away before Jarvis came up in the morning. “Good stuff.”

“You always have the good stuff,” Obie agreed, following Tony into the room. “Sorry to come over so late, but I came back to town as soon as Miss Potts let me know you were home. I guessed you’d still be awake.”

“And here I am,” Tony said with a mocking bow. He picked his glass up off the coffee table and sank into the comfortable white couch. It would be easy to fall asleep there, and he suspected that the ease of sleeping on the couch was more than half of the reason why Pepper bought it. Obie followed him over after collecting a glass of scotch of his own. He sat heavily next to Tony, too close, he was always too close, but Tony knew that was just him – Obie had been like this for as long as Tony could remember, an affectionate man from an affectionate family. He relaxed into the couch, resting the tumbler between his knees, and waited for Obie to speak.

Obie took a sip of his scotch and made a pleased sound. He set the glass on the coffee table and angled his body to face Tony. “You’ve made quite a stir, kid,” he said gently.

Tony wondered if they would ever get to a point when Obie didn’t call him _kid, kiddo, son._ He bit back asking. “That’s me,” he agreed, “A stirrer.”

“You could have at least given us a little warning,” Obie chided, “Who knows what the stocks are going to look like tomorrow.”

“I guess that depends on whether or not the papers decide that I’m a dangerous vigilante, or a warrior for Freedom and Justice. Captain America is on my side, so I’m leaning toward the latter.” He made it into a joke, but it was nothing less than the truth. The immediate future of his company would depend on whether or not the media declared him a hero or a villain, and it was all bullshit. He had Captain America standing next to him at a press conference, so of course they would call him a hero. A big fucking hero who’d started a war.

“We’ll ride through the storm together,” Obie said after a moment, “Like we always do.”

Tony nodded.

“What did you find while you were over there?” Obie pressed, shifting again on the couch, his expression interested and polite, like Tony was just waiting to relive it. “In the bases, I mean. You must have found some pretty compelling evidence to turn to the media like you did. You always did like to make a splash!” He chuckled.

“I would say… yes, compelling would be a good word. We brought back what we could carry, but a lot of it was destroyed when the mountain kind of… collapsed.” Tony made a triangle with his hands and then folded them inward, dropping them to slap to his thighs.

“Do you want me to have it taken away and translated for you?” Obie offered, leaning over to pick up his glass again and taking a healthy sip.

Tony waved one hand dismissively. “Pepper and Jarvis have it. I think Steve and Natasha are going to help them sort through it tomorrow.”

Obie nodded consideringly. He finished off the rest of the scotch and sighed as he set it down. “That’s really too bad, kiddo,” he said, wrapping his arm around Tony’s shoulder. “I was really hoping not to bring Pepper and Jarvis into this.”

Before Tony could process what was happening, a high pitched sound exploded against his ear. His entire body locked up, muscles freezing in place. His lungs continued to draw in air, but he couldn’t move anything below his eyes. He struggled to speak, and things weren’t quite connecting in his head, because he wanted to tell to Obie that something was wrong, but he couldn’t.

“You know,” Obie said, oblivious to Tony’s sudden paralysis. He took Tony’s tumbler out of his unmoving hand and sipped at the whiskey. “I had high hopes for you. You’re a better engineer than your old dad ever was. He was good, don’t get me wrong, but _you_ … boy, you just blew me away. I remember that first time I caught you doodling spells in sidewalk chalk!” He laughed heartily, “You must have been… maybe three? And I said to myself, I said, ‘Obie, you watch that boy. One day, he’d going to make you a lot of money.’”

Swallowing the last of the whiskey, Obie continued, “And you did. You made me a lot more money than even you knew about. But it’s the drink…” He turned the empty tumbler in his hand, holding it up to the light. “It gets all of you Starks in the end, and you were just _waiting_ to crash the company. The company that I built. It broke my heart, sending you to France that last time, Tony, I want you to know that. It was supposed to be a clean death, but… well, things don’t work out the way we expect them to, do they?”

Setting Tony’s tumbler on the table, Obie turned further so he was facing Tony fully. Tony wanted to laugh at how stupid he’d been, and of course it had always been Obie. No one else had the access to his designs, his money, and all the means to cover his tracks like Obie except for Pepper and Jarvis. He hadn’t wanted to consider it because considering Obie meant considering Pepper and Jarvis. He was relieved, at least, to know that it hadn’t been them.

Obie held up a rectangular black box so Tony could see it. “Your old man engineered this. It was one of his ‘Bad Babies,’ the things he built that he couldn’t trust with anyone else. Of course, I took the liberty of a few of them after I had him killed, and this little beauty is my favorite.”

The laughter died a cold death in Tony’s chest, and rage took its place. He’d grown up at Obie’s knee, called him _uncle_ , his dad had called him _brother_ , opened their home to him, invited him over for family dinners. Tony couldn’t fathom how Obie could casually admit to killing the man he’d claimed to love like family. 

“It emits a high-pitched noise that, when placed within a few inches of the skin, causes instant, though temporary, paralysis. It’s not very useful for mass applications, considering how close you have to get to the target, but it has so much potential. Just like you did. I was hoping that I could trust you with little things like this someday,” he admitted sadly, slipping the box into his pocket, “But maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe your father was right when he said that you were nothing more than a disappointment.”

He pat Tony consolingly on the shoulder, and then reached up and started unbuttoning Tony’s shirt. Tony strained against his frozen muscles to shove the bigger man away, to call out the armor, to scream obscenities if nothing else, but he felt disconnected from his body. The armor was sluggish to respond, moving as if drugged, his tattoos flickering weakly at his skin. Obie gently tugged the hem of Tony’s shirt out of his pants and brushed his fingers lovingly over the arc reactor.

“There is one consolation prize,” Obie said, “To you not dying in that tragic airship accident. These last few years, you’ve been so good about staying out of my hair – so to speak --” he added with a cheeky smile, brushing a hand over his bald head, “And here’s this lovely thing, just sitting here in your chest when it could be doing so much more.”

He dug his fingers around the reactor casing, and Tony _felt_ it, the dig of Obie’s nails into his skin. His toes started to tingle, his fingertips, his lips. Tony reached out to the armor again, and he felt it responding more readily, the tattoo on his lower back pushing up to the surface. He felt the thick lines on his hips, the vines on his arms, the complicated geometries between his shoulder blades picking up speed, flushing over his skin, but not fast enough. Obie figured out the catch and twisted the reactor in the casing, breaking it away from its mooring. Tony’s eyes widened in panic as it released from the housing and came free in Obie’s hand. Obie sighed happily and gazed on it with loving eyes.

“You could have gone far, son. Shame that your journey ends here.” He reached into his waistband and pulled out a pistol.

Tony could feel his heart struggling already, imagined that he could feel the pieces of shrapnel inching toward the vulnerable organ, and his tattoos were finally right there at the surface, wrapping around him. He shoved hard, calling the armor out faster than he ever had before, even knowing that it wouldn’t be fast enough to beat a bullet.

~*~

A high pitched ringing woke him, but it faded before he was even sure he’d heard it at all. Steve lay in bed for several seconds, staring up at the ceiling. He looked over at the clock and groaned softly – he’d meant to be spread out on the bed as a surprise for Tony when he came back from the lab, but it was three in the morning, and he didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping. Tony may have already come in, saw that his bed was occupied, and walked back out. Or he could still be in the lab. Either way, Steve should probably go investigate.

He stretched luxuriously, reveling in the feeling of a bed that was big enough to hold him with room to spare. He’d never been in such a comfortable bed, and he’d thought that his spring mattress at SHIELD headquarters was the pinnacle of mattress innovation. He twisted to pop his back, and sat up with a yawn. After the hectic week abroad, Steve could sleep for a week, and he felt groggy as he swung his feet out of bed.

The soft murmur of voices stopped him before he could grab his clothing. He sat back on the bed and twisted to look at the clock again. The only person other than Tony who should be in the penthouse was Bucky, and the voice didn’t sound like his. Steve frowned, growing concerned, but not sure if he should leave the room if Tony had a guest. Steve scrubbed his hand across his eyes and listened closely, trying to place the vaguely familiar voice.

A muffled gunshot had him up and running before he’d fully processed the sound. He snagged his shield off the wall beside the door and charged into the living room with it up. The scene that greeted him was a nightmare – a man that Steve just barely remembered meeting when he’s first woken – Obadiah Stane- standing over Tony’s body, Tony bleeding into the white couch, his body only half armored, and the glow of the arc reactor missing from his chest. Stane whirled to face him, bringing up the gun. Steve easily blocked the wild shot and charged across the room just as Bucky ghosted into the room from the opposite hallway. Stane took one look at them and turned to run. Steve threw the shield, catching him at an angle across the back and sending him stumbling to his knees. Bucky, vaulting over the couch, was on him in a second, bearing him to the floor with a hand on the back of his neck.

“Don’t kill him!” Steve shouted, sliding to his knees at the man’s side, “We need to know what he’s done to Tony.”

“He _shot_ him!” Bucky pointed out in a snarl. Steve ignored him and slammed the edge of the shield down on the struggling man’s arm. Stane howled in pain, his hand releasing the glowing reactor. Steve scooped it up and ran back to Tony’s side.

“Tony, wake up! I don’t know what to do with this!” Steve ordered, looking between the reactor and the gaping hole in Tony’s chest.

“Just put it in the hole!” Bucky ordered from the floor, holding Stane down with one knee on his spine and a hand on the back of his neck. Bucky hardly noticed him bucking and struggling under him, screaming obscenities.

Steve looked back and forth between the reactor and the casing, finally noticing a series of little notches and grooves. He quickly lined the reactor up, notches to grooves, and slotted it back into place. He waited for Tony to start moving, but he remained still and the reactor felt loose in the housing. He gave it a cautious twist and sighed in relief as he felt it lock into place. Tony remained frighteningly limp on the couch though the armor exploded out of his skin as soon as the reactor reconnected. His clothing caught on fire and Steve rushed to grab a throw blanket to beat the flames out.  

“ _Flog durch die stillen Lande_!” Stane choked out. Steve turned in confusion, instantly translating the German line: _flew through the silent lands_ , a line from a poem, nonsense without the lines before and after.

“Kill them both!” the man snarled.

Bucky’s entire body language changed. He stood with the easy economy of motion Steve had noticed in the assassin, shoulders and knees loose, muscles coiled for fast movement. Choking in a breath, Stane crawled to his hands and knees, and Bucky just let him go.

Steve picked up his shield slowly, moving away from Tony where he was so frighteningly motionless. “Bucky…? We need to keep him here,” Steve tried.

Bucky tilted his head. He looked at Stane struggling to stand, and then back to Steve.

“ _Kill him_ ,” the man hissed.

Bucky frowned. He took a stilted step toward Steve, stopped, turned back, and grabbed Stane by the ankle. He yanked him back, but then let go as if he’d been burned. Tension crept into his shoulders, and his expression twisted into agony. Stane started crawling away again, and Steve stepped forward to stop him. The movement caught Bucky’s attention, and he shot across the room, left arm cocked back. Steve got the shield up in time to deflect the blow, but it put him off balance, and he had to dance back several steps to regain it.

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve tried desperately, “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, and you are my friend!” Bucky swiped at him with an almost lazy right hook, lashed out with one leg. Steve jumped over it. “We grew up together, Bucky! You ate at my ma’s table-” A sharp crack against the shield, a solid fist to Steve’s ribs. He backed up again, trying to get in between the escaping man and the door.

“We were lovers from the time we were twelve,” Steve tried to remind him, and maybe the awkward kisses and fumbling hands didn’t really qualify them as _lovers_ then, but they had been in each other’s beds off and on from the time they were fifteen until Steve had met Peggy during the war.

“We used to play in the woods between our-” A heavy hit to gut that momentarily knocked the breath out of him. Steve twisted and pushed Bucky past him. He crashed into the front door, slamming it shut just as Stane tried to open it. The man snarled and shoved Bucky out of the way. Bucky responded by grabbing his tie and hauling up on it, expression blank, eyes dull.

“Not _me_ , you _idiot_ ,” Stane hissed, slapping at Bucky’s face with his good hand, the opposite arm hanging limp and broken at his side. “ _Him_ , kill _him_.”

Bucky hesitated again, brows pulling together slowly, lips working as if he was trying to speak but he couldn’t remember how. His eyes flickered over to Steve and his grip loosened on the struggling man’s tie. Bucky pushed him back into the living room and let him go, his expression so heartbreakingly confused that Steve reached out to him again. It was the second time he’d made that mistake and Bucky whirled, catching him in the side with a solid kick. Stane tried to get past Bucky to the door again, and Bucky pushed him back.

Frustrated, Stane repeated the same nonsense German phrase. He put his hand on Bucky’s jaw, twisting his face roughly to look at Steve, and snarled, “I am your master. Kill that man.”

He let Bucky go, shoving him in Steve’s direction. Steve readied the shield, shifting so he was blocking the door. Bucky moved as if struggling against a tide, taking one hesitating step forward, and then stopping and stepping back.

“You know me,” Steve said, falling into his natural accent, locking eyes with his friend, “You know me. Tha’ man is no’ your master. Remember what we fough’t for, Bucky. You have no master. Come now, Buck, look at me.”

Stane put a hand on Buck’s back between his shoulders and shoved hard. Bucky stumbled forward one step and launched at Steve, no more hesitation, his left arm gleaming under the golden lights. They crashed into the wall hard enough to knock framed pictures down, filling the room with the sounds of broken glass. Steve shoved Bucky off and hit Stane in the chest as he tried to rush past, sending him flailing back into the living room.

Steve heard the front door open, but he was too focused on Bucky’s hand reaching for his throat to assess the new threat. Everything was out of control, Tony could be dying with his killer getting away, and he didn’t know how to make Bucky stop. He collapsed his elbow to his chest, dropping Bucky against him, and just wrapped his arms around his friend’s waist. He tucked his head into Bucky’s neck and took the punches to his ribs without trying to defend himself. He could feel Bucky’s lips moving against his neck like he was speaking, but there was no sound. Steve curled into him and let the shield go. He brought one hand up to cradle the back of Bucky’s head as the hits slowed and faltered.

“I’m staying with you,” Steve said breathlessly around the pain of broken ribs. “I’ll stay.”

Bucky made a soft sound like wounded animal, his fist opening to rest his palm on Steve’s battered ribs. He shoved out of Steve’s arms uncertainly, left hand curling and stretching, fingers moving restlessly. Steve stayed against the wall, body on fire in a dozen places, and just waited.  Bucky dropped to his knees, and Steve could see tears streaking down his cheeks as their eyes met. He resisted the first impulse to move to Bucky’s side, kept their gazes locked together.

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbled, dropping forward to support himself on his left hand. He clutched at the gleaming metal arm, and Steve realized that it wasn’t just reflecting the light, it was actually glowing. Bucky clenched his teeth and screamed against them curling his back. Steve watched in alarm as tattoos swirled over his skin, a circle between his shoulder blades glowing red. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tony stumble off the couch, flicking his hands to peel the gauntlets away. He wove a drunken line to Bucky’s side with his hands held out, his face horribly pale, lips tinted blue.

Bucky twisted to snarl at him, and Steve held out a frantic hand. “Don’t-!” he tried, but Tony ignored him.

He dropped to his knees and shoved a hand over the glowing circle on Bucky’s back, pushing him to the floor. Steve shouted in horrified denial as the light shifted from red to orange to gold, and overwhelmed them both. He took a step forward with no idea what he was going to do, but the light intensified with a sudden wave of heat. Steve turned away, throwing a hand up to shield his eyes from the bright flash.

~*~

They heard the sounds of the struggle as soon as the elevator doors opened. Pepper kicked her shoes off and took off like a shot, quickly outpacing Jarvis. He reached out to stop her, but she was through the door before he’d even gotten within reaching distance. She collided with a larger form in the doorway and they both went down in a flail of limbs and shouting.

Jarvis didn’t have time to look around the room. Obadiah had ended up on top of Pepper during the fall, and he had one fist cocked back while she struggled under him. The sight of him made Jarvis’ blood heat to boiling in his veins – he’d never particularly _liked_ Obadiah Stane, but they’d been allies – Jarvis had _thought_ they’d been allies – in protecting Tony from Howard, nurturing him, supporting him. Seeing him ready to hurt Pepper combined with the understanding of how much pain he’d already caused Tony, and Jarvis shouted a war cry like a savage as he ran through the door.

He lowered his shoulder and plowed into the bigger man, knocking him sideways into the kitchen. They crashed into the cupboards, Obadiah bellowing like an enraged bull. He grabbed the teakettle off the stove and lifted it, but Pepper was on him before he could deliver the blow, one arm wrapped under his raised arm, the other around his throat. Her stocking-clad feet slipped on the tiled floor and she struggled to close her arms around Obadiah’s bigger body. Jarvis twisted out from under him and aimed the heel of his shoe for Obadiah’s stomach.

He curled forward with a shout, flipping Pepper over his shoulder. She landed awkwardly across Jarvis’ chest and he hissed out a pained breath, grabbing her by the waist and pushing her away before Obadiah could land a strike. The teakettle smashed into the tiles, and Jarvis got them rolled over and out of the way in the next moment. Obadiah caught his ankle and yanked him back, but Pepper was crawling over him with a kitchen knife in the next moment, and Obadiah let him go to flee. Jarvis managed to tangle a leg with his feet, and Obadiah shouted a curse, kicking out hard. Pain exploded up Jarvis’ leg and he curled in automatically, just barely aware of Pepper chasing after Stane with the knife as he shoved out of the kitchen. Sucking in a breath, Jarvis got back to his feet and swore – he didn’t have time to deal with fractures. He grabbed the abandoned teakettle and hobbled back into the fray. Pepper’s knife had been knocked away and she was jabbing at Obadiah’s gut while he tried to fend her off, but she was quick and had some training, and he was already injured. Jarvis was instantly proud of her, but filled with gnawing worry as he looked for an opening to get Obadiah away from her.

Unable to rely on his leg to hold his weight, Jarvis cocked the teakettle back and threw it as hard as he could. The cast iron kettle hit Obadiah in the low back and he barked sharply in pain, whirling to face the new threat. He charged Jarvis like a freight train, one hand aimed for his throat. Jarvis caught him, but the other man outweighed him by five stone at least, and he didn’t have the leverage to stop that kind of weight bearing down on him. They hit the kitchen door frame, Jarvis shoving at Obadiah’s face, Obadiah clawing to get a hand around his throat.

Obadiah gasped in a sudden breath, swayed, and abruptly went limp. When Jarvis looked up, Pepper was standing with her legs spread wide in her ripped skirt, a heavy crystal decanter held in both hands, panting and covered in whiskey.

“I never liked you,” she told Stane, kicking his leg weakly.

Jarvis struggled to catch his breath, and finally asked, “Did you have to use the Dalmore? The Glenfiddich would have done just as well.”

She looked down at the decanter, and then at her dress, torn and soaked through with alcohol. “This was my favorite,” she mourned.

Jarvis opened his mouth to reply, but a light from the living room caught his attention. He peered around her to see Tony in his armor, stumbling across the room to a kneeling Bucky, Steve – naked – trying to warn him off. Bucky’s back was awash in construct tattoos, glowing an alarming bright red. Tony crashed to his knees and shoved his bare palm into the center of the light, seeming to only make it glow brighter.

Eyes wide, Jarvis grabbed Pepper around the waist and spun her into the kitchen, ignoring her startled squeak and the shriek of pain from his leg. They crashed back to the tiled floor as a bright flash exploded through the apartment.

~*~

Tony’s palm connected to the glowing construct on Bucky’s back and he knew its purpose instantly. The matching construct between his own shoulder blades pulsed hotly in sympathy. He had only moments, he knew, to unmake it. It wasn’t possible, but he dove into the construct anyway, let it suck him down into the weave, and struggled to get a handle on it. There was too much – he’d taken a month to unmake the explosive construct etched into his own spine, and he’d had Bruce to work as a conduit and proxy. The energy rushed through him in searing waves, burning him from the inside out, bringing him into the loop and subverting _his_ energy for its own purpose, sucking it out of his body faster than he could redirect it to break the construct down. It would drain him to a shell in a heartbeat, and he didn’t have time to beat it.

It was bigger than his construct had been, tied to an energy source so massive that it could only be the construct artifact welded to Bucky’s body. Tony fought against the tide, grasping frantically at the lines. He knew which ones he needed to cut and which ones needed to be remade, but he couldn’t get to them fast enough, and the weight of the artifact was too much, too hot, too unfathomable for him to touch.

He screamed in helpless frustration, knowing that he’d failed, that Steve, Bucky, even Obie – everyone in the tower, maybe everyone in the _city_ was going to die because he wasn’t fast enough, because he hadn’t done enough, because he wasn’t _better_. They were mere nanoseconds away from critical mass when the ponderous entity that was the artifact seemed to take notice of him. It peered at him, examined him, watched him as he frantically unraveled the construct, _judged him_. Tony would never know what it found, but in the next moment it slid around him like a cool blanket. Fresh energy poured through him faster than the construct could suck it out by an order of magnitude. Time seemed to slow, and Tony was surrounded by the deadly red lines of the explosive construct. He reached out and broke the triggering line, looped it, twisted it, folded it in on itself.

When the construct finally bent to his will, it asked, _what is my purpose?_

High on paraetheric energy and feeling a wonderful sense of peace, Tony reached out to it and said, _Protect_.

It flared with energy borrowed from the artifact, turned an incandescent blue and respond, _Protect_.

~*~

Tony lifted his hand away from Bucky’s back and crashed to his ass. His skin felt seared, but that was nothing new – it was the spots dancing in front of his eyes that made him want to throw up. Silence reigned in the aftermath of the light explosion. Tony looked up wearily.

“So that,” he explained to a very confused, very _naked_ Steve, “Was a bomb.”

Steve just stared at him, his mouth hanging open. His eyes flickered to Bucky, now curled on his side, unconscious. The tattoos hadn’t faded, but they pulsed a gentle blue rather than the blinding gold. The ridges on his silver arm glowed with the same light, the star inscribed on his shoulder nearly blinding with it.

Steve took a single step and fell to his knees. He dragged Tony into his chest, kissing him fiercely, a fine tremor running through his body. When he pulled back, Tony just rested his head on Steve’s shoulder. He felt weak and dizzy, his stomach twisting with the aftereffects of the paralysis device.

Bracing himself, he asked, “Where’s Obi – Obadiah?”

“He’s…” Steve twisted, winced, and put a hand over his ribs. He looked like hell, bruises blossoming over his entire chest and back. Tony reached out to steady him and almost laughed at how ridiculous they were – Steve beaten to a pulp, and Tony with a bullet lodged his shoulder. The armor had cauterized the wound, and he was going to have open it back up again to get the metal out – that would be fun. Steve turned more carefully.

“He’s right there,” he said finally, making a gesture toward the kitchen.

“Is he alive?” Tony asked, keeping his voice very even and not turning to look. He felt a sort of deadness in his chest as he asked the question, completely unable to process the nightmare of Uncle Obie betraying him so thoroughly. Though maybe it wasn’t a betrayal at all since he’d obviously never had Obadiah’s loyalty to begin with. He thought he should be more upset, but he just felt drained.

“I’m not sure,” Steve said. He looked back at Bucky, swallowed hard, and quietly asked, “Is he…?”

Tony shook his head. “He’s fine. Well, I don’t know about _fine_ , but he’s alive.”

“What _was_ that?”

Rubbing a hand over his face, Tony shrugged. “A failsafe. Schmidt etched the construct into his spine, a self-destruct if he ever went off the reservation.” He frowned. “It shouldn’t have activated on its own though. Either he somehow triggered it himself, or a Hydra goon just tried to assassinate us with your friend.”

“It’s a different color now,” Steve observed. One hand twitched like he wanted to reach out, but he held himself back.

“It’s the artifact,” Tony said. He reached forward and curled a hand over the metal arm. It was warm and pulsed with life, thrumming under his hand with a signature he could now understand, familiar and comfortable where it reached up to touch his own. “Whatever this thing is, it’s powerful… complex.” His lips jerked up into a smile. “I could almost believe that it wasn’t made by human hands.”

Steve set a hand on his face and drew him back around, staring at him with concerned eyes. “You almost died.”

“If I hadn’t remade the construct, we all would have died,” Tony said, “And considering the juice in this thing, we would have taken half of New York with us.”

Steve was quiet for a moment while he processed the enormity of the disaster they’d barely averted. “What did you remake it into?” he asked finally.

“A block for that goddamned code phrase, and any others they’ve programmed into him,” Tony hissed. The skin between his shoulder blades tingled, and he scowled at the glowing circle on Bucky’s back, a near exact match to his own. If he hadn’t known what to look for, if the artifact hadn’t been shockingly _helpful_ , Tony wouldn’t have made it in time, he wouldn’t have known which lines to cut, and the pattern to reweave. He remembered his mother once saying _everything happens for a reason_ , and he wanted to throw up at the sentimentality of it.

“What did you hit Stane with?” Tony asked, dragging his mind away from the old, dark path.

“I didn’t,” Steve said, shaking his head. He frowned. “Maybe it was the explosion.”

“Afraid it was just your forty year-old scotch, sir,” Jarvis’ familiar voice announced as he hobbled out of the kitchen with Pepper wedged under his arm. Tony struggled to stand, but a rush of dizziness made him rethink it. Despite broken ribs, Steve rolled easily to his feet and rushed across the room to support Jarvis’ other side. Between him and Pepper, they got him arranged on the couch.

“I might have spilled all of your whiskey, Tony,” Pepper explained, not sounding even the least apologetic.

Tony’s eyes found the decanter on the floor by Obadiah, an inch of amber liquid still pooled in the rounded belly. “A noble sacrifice,” Tony said finally. He gave the Dalmore a salute, “A finer whiskey there never was, farewell, old friend.”

Steve returned to his side, setting a hand to the chest piece. “Can you get this off?” he asked. “You were shot.”

“Oh, was I?” Tony quipped, “I didn’t notice.”

“You were _shot_ , Tony?” Pepper hissed from the couch. She seemed to notice the blood for the first time and hurried across the room, picking her way over Bucky’s unconscious form to kneel in front of him. “Get your friend,” she said to Steve, giving Tony a hard look. “I’ll get him out of the armor.”

“Well, Miss Potts, if I’d known it just took getting shot for you to want me naked, I would have done it years ago.”

“Don’t let him trick you,” Steve said as he rolled Bucky over and picked him up, “He would have gotten naked for a lot less than getting shot.”

“It’s true,” Tony confirmed, testing the armor to see where it could be pulled in and how quickly, and if maybe he could just manage the shoulder where he’d taken the bullet. “This man knows me well.”

Pepper gave him a tired, lovely smile and said, “Just get undressed, Mr. Stark.”

~*~

Steve carried a sleeping Bucky back to bed, setting him gently on the mattress. He wet a cloth in the attached bathroom and returned to wipe the sour sweat off his arms and chest, using it as an excuse to examine the still-glowing tattoos in more detail. They weren’t like Tony’s, which varied from twisting vines and thorns, to complicated geometries, to swirls and loops. The lines glowing on Bucky’s skin looked somehow older than that, simple and primitive, but powerful. He didn’t touch the artifact arm, uncomfortable with it, feeling it somehow an intrusion when Bucky was asleep, and it didn’t know why. Bucky’s body had always been open to his touch, even after they stopped being lovers, it was never not okay to touch his friend. Something about the arm just felt like it didn’t belong to him.

Wiping the cool cloth over Bucky’s forehead, Steve leaned down and set a kiss at the corner of his eye. He brushed Bucky’s hair back and pulled the sheet up to his chest, setting his arms on top of the covers the way Bucky had always slept. He hesitated at the door, and, feeling foolish, left it open a crack with the light on in the hallway.

Tony was still seated on the living room coach, Jarvis stitching up the bullet wound, his head tipped back so he could see out of his glasses. Pepper emerged from the opposite hallway just as Steve reached the couch. She carried an upholstered sewing box under one arm and knelt at Jarvis feet to rummage in it. Jarvis winced when she cut into his pant leg.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked, pulling the scissors away and looking up at him worriedly.

Jarvis shook his head and sighed. “Not at all Miss Potts. These are merely my favorite pants. Carry on.”

Smiling despite the events of the weekend, Pepper cut his pants open to the seam to examine his leg. Steve hovered, uncertain of how to help – he had some medical training from the war, but nothing extensive, just the tricks that all soldiers picked up so they could help their comrades off the field. He was just opening his mouth to ask what he could do to help when a moan pulled his attention back to the door, where Steve had tied Stane up and left him for the cops.

Steve stalked over to him. He dropped into a crouch on his toes, forearms braced on his thighs, and waited for Stane to regain consciousness. He almost wished he were still naked just for the intimidation factor, just because Stane struck him as the kind of man to be annoyed by another man’s body. Stane shifted, swallowed, made a soft noise of pain, and opened his eyes. He jerked when he saw Steve looming over him, tugging at his hands as if to shield his face, but they were tied to chord circling his waist.

“Go ahead,” Steve invited, “Take a second to collect yourself.”

“Going to torture me now?” Stane snarled. “Do your worst.”

“Oh, no,” Steve said, “Torture was never something I was good at. I think I’m going to sleep quite well at night knowing that you’re in prison. I understand that they’re not very pleasant places.”

“I’ll be out in a week,” Stane promised.

Steve considered him. He leaned closer so their noses almost touched. “You better hope not.”

He wanted to make Stane tell him what his plans were for the reactor, and what kind of miserable human being he had to be to betray someone who loved him, but a knock at the door interrupted him before he could get another word. He sighed, stood, and let the police in. He’d never abused the Captain America title before, but he was sure that he could get someone at the station to let him have ten minutes alone with Stane when Tony wasn’t listening to every word. A medic followed behind the half-dozen uniformed officers, and she pushed past the policemen with an annoyed huff to get to her patients. She glanced between the two of them, dismissed Tony, and hustled Pepper out of the way.

She offered Jarvis a hand. “My name is Darcy.”

Jarvis gave her a polite smile, but he didn’t take his hands away from Tony’s shoulder. “Edwin Jarvis, a pleasure. You’ll understand if I don’t shake your hand, I hope?”

She waved it off with a smile and pressed clever fingers into his leg. Jarvis hissed and she shook her head. “Definitely broken. You’re going to need to come to the hospital, sir.”

“Just give him a painkiller,” Tony ordered. “Bruce will be here in ten minutes. He’ll take care of it.”

Darcy, mouth pulled into a mulish frown, brightened. “Dr. Bruce Banner?” she asked excitedly.

“The one and only,” Tony confirmed.

“Boy, Dr. Foster is going to love this one…” she said, but didn’t explain who ‘Dr. Foster’ was, but Tony seemed to know who she was talking about and they struck up an animated conversation while Jarvis tied off the stitches and Darcy inscribed a construct on a sheet of blue paper. Steve recognized it from his operations with SHIELD as construct paper already imbued with paraetheric energy.  

Steve stood uselessly in the foyer, watching the police hauling a very uncooperative Stane to his feet, annoyed at how many of them there were. He knew they didn’t normally roam in packs, so he could only assume that the other four were there to gawk and gossip.

“We’re going to need everyone involved to come down to the station and give a statement,” the oldest of the six said while his two younger coworkers hustled Stane to his feet.

“Do not remove that man,” Steve ordered, ignoring the other officer for the moment. “Colonel James Rhodes is on his way to oversee his safe transport. Feel free to take a seat.”

“This is not a military –”

“That was not a request,” Steve said firmly, and he was glad he didn’t have to take it any further, as Rhodey strode into the room in full uniform as if he’d been summoned. He had two military police with him in combat gear. Steve nodded to him, and he nodded back. Stane looked even more displeased with the turn of events than he had the moment before, and that made Steve happy in a way that was honestly frightening.

“I’ll take it from here, Captain,” Rhodey said. He turned a hard glare on the two young officers and they hastily stepped away so Rhodey’s MPs could take hold of Stane between them.

Satisfied that Stane wasn’t going to be conveniently lost in transport, Steve turned back to the older officer. “My apologies. I’m sure we would all be happy to give you statements –”

“Here,” Pepper interrupted, leaving Jarvis to the medic and approaching them with a formidable look on her face. “We will be happy to give you statements _here_. Tomorrow.” She summoned a smile. “Thank you for your prompt response. I will call you tomorrow as soon as everyone is awake and we will be happy to cooperate.”

The officer glanced in between Steve and Pepper and decided that it wasn’t worth it to make enemies of them. He flipped his book closed, and Steve gave him a smile. He liked the man and his partner a lot better than he did the other four sulking officers. Steve offered him a hand for a solemn shake, and escorted the whole gaggle of them out of the apartment. Without anyone else to loom over, Steve returned to the couch and sat silently at Tony’s side until Bruce arrived to take charge of Jarvis’ care. Pepper helped Jarvis into the wheel chair and Darcy followed them out the door without an invitation, chattering rapidly at a very startled Bruce, who was obviously not used to the attention.

“Are you going to be alright?” Pepper asked Tony, looking worriedly down at him.

Tony nodded, and summoned a weak smile. “I’m sure the good Captain here will keep me occupied.”

Pepper glanced over at Steve, and Steve nodded in a silent promise. She sighed, the lines between her brows not smoothing at all. “I can stay,” she offered.

“That would be good,” Tony said unexpectedly, and Steve should have seen it, the uncomfortable way she was shifting her weight, picking at the nail polish on one finger with the opposite thumb. He felt instantly guilty for expecting that she would want to go home alone after the night’s events. “You remember your way around the guestroom, I hope.”

“I would hope so,” Pepper said, rolling her eyes, “I designed it.” She leaned down and kissed Tony’s forehead, smoothing his hair back. She surprised Steve by leaning over and repeating the process with him, her fingers tiny and cold against his scalp, her lips warm on his forehead. “Goodnight.”  

They were quiet while padded across the room in her torn stocking and disappeared down the hallway. Steve leaned over and peered at Tony’s wound as an excuse to get close to him. Tony let him do it for a second and then cautiously put a hand on Steve’s neck and pulled him into his chest. Steve let out a great gust of air, not realizing how much tension he was carrying until it washed out. He pressed into Tony’s chest, cheek resting just above the arc reactor, listening to his heartbeat under the thrum of the construct. He didn’t think he would ever be recovered from the sight of that gaping hole in Tony’s chest.

“So he _was_ your lover,” Tony said after a quiet minute. “The history books have always wondered, you know. It’s been a big subject of debate in the academic communities. Feuds have been started over it, and, if you’ve never met any historians, let me tell you – those can be _brutal_.”

“Why are people so fascinated about my love life?” Steve asked, exasperated.

Tony shrugged, the motion carrying through his chest. “Because you’re _you_. People are always going to be fascinated about everything about you.”

Steve sighed, but then nodded. He’d known that he would be a topic of discussion from the moment Erskine and Anthony made history with the first – and, as he’d been told, _only_ – successful super soldier transformation. He just didn’t think he would be alive long enough to find historians fighting over the details of his life.

“He was,” Steve said finally. “For most of our lives. We didn’t sleep together anymore after I found Peggy. I thought that we were going to be married, have kids, a farm… her family actually was Catholic, and I tried to be good for her. Be worthy of her.”

Tony didn’t say anything, but his hand carded through Steve’s hair, petting, soothing. Steve could still feel he agitation in his movements though, the tension in his shoulders. He pulled his head away from Tony’s chest and kissed him gently. “Let’s get you off this bloody couch.”

Tony winced, and then nodded, pointedly not looking at the blanket that had been hastily thrown over the stain. Steve stood and leaned down to pick him up before Tony could muster himself to stand. Tony must have been feeling lousy, because he didn’t even protest to being carried in Steve’s arms like a bride. He carried Tony back to the bed, and retrieved another cloth from the bathroom. The parallel felt surreal as he washed the blood and sweat off of Tony’s skin. He almost wondered if he should kiss Tony’s forehead, tuck him in, and walk out, but Tony caught his wrist when he shifted to stand. Steve slid into the bed next to him.

“So,” Tony started after several minutes of uncomfortable silence, “This is going to be a really shitty conversation after that whole thing in Berlin, but are you going back to him? Bucky?”

Steve propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Tony’s tense expression. He leaned down and kissed him gently. “He’s my best friend, and I love him, and that’s not going to change. But I don’t see myself ever leaving your bed unless you kick me out.” He drew a hand down Tony’s neck. “You’ve gotten under my skin, Tony Stark, and I don’t think I’ll ever be over you.”

“That’s a stupid decision,” Tony hissed. “The only thing I have under my skin is iron.”

“Stupid decisions are something I specialize in,” Steve said as he settled into Tony’s side. “And I like your iron.”


	11. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**_The World’s First Team of Superheroes Takes the Stage_ **

**_October 7, 1937_ **

**_Notorious billionaire Anthony Stark, president and CEO of Stark Industries, appeared in Paris earlier this week with proof of atrocities committed by Hitler’s scientific research division, Hydra. The news has shocked the world to its foundations, and supporter of Hitler and his Nazi party has run thin on the ground. As of this morning, five nations, including both Great Britain and France, have declared war on Nazi Germany, with more declarations expected by week’s end._ **

**_“The world deserves to know what has been going in secret at these Hydra bases,” said Tony Stark in his historic press conference, held at a private aeroport dock on Tuesday. The seemingly wild claims of human experimentation, dangerous magical rituals, and mass murder were substantiated by one Arnim Zola, reportedly the head research scientist with Hydra. Stark has also promised additional proof in the form of documentation to be delivered to major publications and law enforcement agencies within the next week. Independent sources have verified Zola’s connection to the research division, but the Nazi Party leadership is denying all claims._ **

**_Owner and pilot of the private airship_ The Iron Avenger _, Tony Stark has made it clear that he intends to, “See that the right thing is done.” With a crew composed of the infamous Dr. Bruce Banner, the victim of a magic-science experiment gone wrong, SHIELD agents Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton, and the recently-revived Captain America, he seems well suited to make good on his promise._**

**_With no official word from the United States congress on a possible declaration of war, the question the world has now is how and when The Avengers will join the fight…_ **

**_Continued on page 6…_ **

Tony set the paper down and reached up to massage his temples. With all the fuss over declarations of war, the news of Obie’s betrayal and arrest had been relegated to short column on page three of _The Times._ Pepper and Jarvis were both working overtime fielding and fending off calls from reporters, politicians, military brass, and government officials. Both France and Germany were laying claim to Zola and filing extradition paperwork, Germany was also calling for _his_ wrists in cuffs, and Tony had a meeting with the president in six hours. Pepper had already warned him that she would castrate him if he didn’t show up, and, with as overworked as she had been the last forty-eight hours, Tony didn’t really want to test her patience.

At a soft patter of feet, Tony turned to see Bucky slipping cautiously out of the hallway. He gave Tony an uncertain look, hovering in the doorway. Tony waved him forward. “Breakfast is on the sidebar, help yourself.”

Bucky nodded and padded over to examine the table. He was dressed once again from neck to ankles, and wore a glove over his left hand. Tony found his bare feet unexpectedly charming set against the rest of the heavy clothing.

“You don’t have to hide it,” Tony commented when Bucky sat down.

Bucky looked down at his left hand, curling his fingers. He hesitated, and then pulled the glove off and offered Tony his hand. It still glowed blue with construct tattoos, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Tony pushed his untouched breakfast aside and crawled half onto the table so he could get his hands around the artifact. He cradled Bucky’s wrist with one hand and shoved his sleeve back with the other, examining the neat, simple lines. He traced one with a finger, remembering the almost sentient way the artifact had responded to him. It was warm in his hands, and he felt a faint sense of familiarity, as if it was acknowledging him.

“Thank you,” Bucky said after a long stretch of silence.

“You’re welcome,” Tony said, not needing to ask why, “But I mostly did it so you didn’t blow up half the city.”

Bucky winced, and nodded. Tony continued to trace the lines, unabashedly pushing Bucky’s sleeve up further when it got in his way. Bucky made no complaints, eating oatmeal one handed and compliantly curling or stretching his fingers when Tony asked. When he couldn’t get around the sleeve any further, Bucky pulled away from him and stripped the shirt off. He draped it over his lap and held his arm out again.

“Does it feel like your natural arm?” Tony asked, peering more closely at the simulated swell of muscle when the arm flexed.

“No,” Bucky responded easily, “It’s… lighter, faster. More responsive.”

Tony nodded and twisted Bucky's arm at the shoulder to examine the underside. After several minutes of quiet, Tony sat back. He watched Bucky carefully as he asked, “How did you survive all these years?”

Bucky’s expression went very closed and cautious. He met Tony’s eyes, blinking slowly, considering him. “I don’t remember,” he said finally, “I remember falling, and voices, and then waking up in a cell.”

Tony felt the words hit him in the chest. He looked away. “Look at us with so much to talk about,” he muttered under his breath. Bucky didn’t ask him to repeat himself, and he didn’t. The silence grew awkward as the moments passed, neither of them eating, Bucky still examining him like he was a puzzle, Tony refusing to meet his eyes.

The tension was thankfully broken by Steve ambling into the room. He was unfortunately wearing a lot more clothing than he had been the night before. His eyes swept in between Bucky and Tony, and he made an effort to sound casual as he greeted them, crossing the floor. He stopped behind Tony’s chair, set a hand on the back of his neck – not on his shoulder, he’d already figured that out – and leaned down to kiss him.

“Morning,” Tony replied finally, fishing up a smile. Steve touched his face gently with a single finger, and moved away. Somehow that finger ghosting across his cheek was even more intimate that being kissed at the breakfast table.

“I don’t get a good morning kiss?” Bucky teased, a little too late for it to have been an automatic jibe.

Steve collected his breakfast, crossed behind Bucky’s chair, and put a finger under Bucky’s chin. He tilted his head back and kissed his forehead. Tony watched them speculatively, waiting for a surge of jealousy or anger, but none surfaced. It was okay watching them together with Steve’s embarrassingly sappy confession the night before.

“That’s better,” Bucky said firmly with a smile that Tony recognized as fake, but he didn’t call him on it, because he’d worn that smile too many times himself.

Instead, he smirked and advised, “If you pout, he’ll probably kiss you on the mouth.”

They both gave him startled looks, but Steve leaned back down and kissed Bucky quickly on the lips. “Pouting not necessary,” he said simply, sitting down.  

The door opened before Tony could decide on a witty comeback, and Jarvis limped in, carrying a fresh plate of bacon. “Please put your clothing on while at the table, Mr. Barnes,” he chastised.

Bucky obeyed without a word, pulling the shirt over his head. It was too small for him, one of Tony’s largest long-sleeved shirts, and it molded tightly to his chest and shoulders. Jarvis’ eyes ran over his dimensions and Tony knew that a better-fitting wardrobe would be installed in Bucky’s room in under a week, even with all the madness surrounding them. The fact that it was already “Bucky’s room” surprised him – he didn’t give up space in his home easily, but Tony couldn’t imagine making him leave. Or even, honestly, _letting_ him leave. He wasn’t sure if that was because Bucky was potentially dangerous, or if Tony’s “conversation” with the construct artifact was skewing his opinions, or a combination of both.

“Jarvis,” Tony tried for the third time, “Please sit down. You’re moving like an injured duck, and it’s making me sad. We’re all big boys, we can make our own breakfast.”

“I am more than capable of making breakfast, sir,” Jarvis sniffed, offended. “Put your sling back on,” he said as an afterthought, leaving the bacon and waiting for Tony to get his arm back into the sling before hobbling back to the kitchen. The front doors opened a few minutes later, and Natasha entered in men’s clothing with Phil Coulson right behind her. She looked well rested, and Tony liked the look of her in pants and suspenders. He made a mental note to spearhead a few advertising campaign of women in suspenders to see if he could spark a trend.

“Traitor,” Tony said, affecting a scandalized expression, “You’ve brought the enemy into my own _home_!” He didn’t realize the idiocy of the words until they were already on his tongue. He’d brought the enemy into his home just seven hours before, walked him right in and handed him a drink. He cleared his throat, and Coulson kindly said nothing about it as he took a seat to Tony’s left. Natasha’s eyes were speculative and intense as they lingered on his injured arm.

Her lips pursed. Tony couldn’t tell if she was angry about Tony’s injury, or irritated that Tony had so stupidly let a viper grow right under his feet. Either way, he didn’t want to talk about it. She gave him a small nod of acknowledgement, and it was really scary the way she was developing some weird ability to read his mind. She grabbed herself breakfast and sat next to Bucky, greeting him first in French, and then in Spanish, and finally Russian. He responded easily to all three greetings, and they settled into a discussion in her native Russian. It wasn’t Tony’s best language and his head hurt trying to follow them. By Steve’s interested expression, he wasn’t having any issues at all.

Clearing his throat to get his attention, Phil said, “I would like to go over some strategies with you, Mr. Stark.”

“Can’t you see I’m eating breakfast?” Tony demanded.

Coulson glanced at Tony’s plate of eggs, quickly cooling into an unappetizing mass. He set a file on the table and opened it without commenting on the eggs. “SHIELD is currently outfitting an airship to serve a mobile command center,” he explained. “We would like to hire your consulting services to this end.”

He slid the papers across the table and Tony pushed his plate away further so that he could read them. Steve appropriated his plate a moment later and gamely munched on the cold eggs, interjecting a comment into Bucky and Natasha’s conversation while Tony looked over the plans. Tony reached up and patted the space behind his ears, and then both hips, and finally the left side of his chest, looking for a pencil and not remembering that he was wearing pajamas. Coulson slid a hand into his jacket and came out with a neatly sharpened yellow stick pencil.

Tony helpfully scribbled all over the plans and handed them back with a smile.

Coulson quirked an eyebrow down at them. “Could you be more specific?”

“Nope. It’s crap. All of it is crap. Who _designed this_?” Tony demanded, snatching the plans back and squinting at the signature in the corner. “ _Hammer?_ Justin Hammer? Seriously? First of all – you went to him first, and that insults me. Second of all, you went to him _at all_ , and that makes me question your worth as an organization, and lastly – of all,” Tony summed up, “You expect me to work on plans that Justin _Hammer_ has put his hands on?”

He crossed his free arm over his chest, and then added for good measure, “And _post_ -lastly of all, I saw what you did there. You gave that to me so I would redesign your airship to be a million times better as a matter of pride. I didn’t miss that.”

Coulson gave him a bland look and closed the file. He pushed it over to Tony. “I think you give me too much credit, Mr. Stark.”

Tony glared at him, and Coulson smiled back pleasantly. “What do you even need this for?” Tony asked, gesturing to the file.

“My team will be your primary support in the field, Mr. Stark.” His smile got bigger, “Since I know how much you’ve been wanting to spend time with me.”

“Oh, _Goody_.” Tony intoned, but he was surprised by the announcement and not sure if he wanted the assistance from SHIELD, or why they were offering in the first place. His instincts said it was just to keep a closer eye on him, but he felt fairly secure that he’d earned enough of Natasha and Clint’s trust in the last several months that they wouldn’t put up with being spied on by their own spy organization.  

Clint and Bruce wandered in half an hour later. Clint glanced at Coulson and then very deliberately took a seat at Natasha’s side. Tony watched him carefully. Something was different about him, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on it. Coulson got up to help himself to breakfast and Clint’s eyes immediately followed him, his chin tilting just enough to show a mottled red mark behind his ear. Tony grinned wolfishly.

“Did you get your dry cleaning mixed up with someone else’s?” he asked innocently, finally realizing what had been bothering him – his shirt was too tight in the shoulders. The only reason he hadn't noticed it right away was because Steve and Bucky had been wandering around in ill-fitting clothing for days.

Clint actually blushed and Tony almost felt guilty, except that Natasha looked over at Clint and said, “If you’re going to try to hide it, you might not want to wear his cologne.”

Coulson set a plate down in front of Clint and, without missing a beat, asked, “Whose cologne?”

His poker face was so perfect that Tony almost thought he’d gotten it wrong, that Clint had stayed in someone else’s bed the night before and wandered in wearing in their clothes, but Clint just tucked into his breakfast and said nothing, which was enough of an answer all on its own. He was considering how best to irritate Coulson over it when Steve poked him with a fork and shook his head in a silent order. Tony pouted at him, and Steve patted his arm consolingly. It was disgustingly intimate, the unspoken conversation thing. Natasha rolled her eyes.

Rhodey arrived with Pepper well after most of them were finished eating. For some reason Tony couldn’t fathom, they were all still seated at the table with coffee cups and juice, chatting like it was a normal morning and there wasn’t a giant bloodstain on his formerly-white couch. Pepper had already been up for hours and she looked completely exhausted as she fell into a chair, gratefully accepting a special cup of coffee with whipped cream on top. She smiled at Jarvis gratefully, and he finally chose to take a seat with his own coffee.

“Nice of you to join us,” Natasha said drolly, kicking a chair out for Rhodey. “We’ve been waiting on you. We need to discuss our next move.”

Tony didn’t realize they’d been waiting for anything, but of course they had been; the mood around the table shifted immediately as they settled in to talk seriously. He looked around the table, bemused. It was the second time in less than two weeks that his table was filled with people he hadn’t even paid to be there.

Despite the blood, the nightmares, and the trouble looming on the horizon, it felt like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a wild ride! Discussion welcome, and come visit me at: 
> 
> http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/ 
> 
> Research notes: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/119911770190/wolves-in-the-world-research-list
> 
> End notes, with comments from my beta: http://lightshadowverisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/119981038535/hey-i-just-finished-your-fic-wolves-in-the 
> 
> Comments: In general, I have a personal policy of responding to all my comments, even if it's a simple "thank you" to let you know I've read (and appreciate) it. However, if you feel uncomfortable with that idea, or you just don't want a response, feel free to add "NRN" (no response needed) to your comment. :)


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